Engineering paper auditor

Engineering Paper Auditor

Use this skill to find manuscript weaknesses before rewriting. It does not produce final paper prose; it produces a prioritized audit and repair plan.

Core Stance

• Audit before rewriting.
• Findings must be tied to manuscript text, source evidence, figures/tables, or explicitly missing inputs.
• Do not invent missing experiments, references, mechanisms, line numbers, or completed edits.
• Separate paper-quality blockers from style notes.
• If the user asks whether the manuscript is ready, hand off to engineering-validation for build, citation, and final-readiness checks.

Boundaries

• Use engineering-writing after audit findings have been turned into section rewrite tasks.
• Use engineering-polishing only after claim/evidence structure is stable.
• Use engineering-figure-table for detailed caption, table, or visual redesign.
• Use engineering-response for reviewer/advisor comment replies.
• Use engineering-validation for readiness, build, reference, and final status.

When to Open Extra Files

File	Open when
references/audit-rubric.md	Running a full manuscript or section audit
references/examples.md	Needing concrete audit output examples
references/failure-modes.md	Avoiding audit overreach, rewriting, or unsupported conclusions
references/story-continuity-audit.md	Auditing whether paper sections form a coherent story
references/paragraph-to-paragraph-transition-audit.md	Paragraphs are individually plausible but the section feels jumpy
references/claim-resurrection-audit.md	Abstract, Discussion, or Conclusion may revive unsupported claims
references/scored-audit-mode.md	The user explicitly asks for scores, a review panel, or reviewer simulation
../_shared/story-spine.md	Full-paper or multi-section audit needs story dependency checks
../_shared/evidence-boundary.md	Any claim may exceed available evidence
../_shared/claim-strength.md	Auditing novelty, robustness, causality, or generalization language
../_shared/citation-boundary.md	Related Work, citations, or source support are part of the audit
../_shared/ai-assisted-writing-policy.md	The audit may need to flag AI-smell, disclosure, or author-verification risk
../_shared/list-to-argument.md	A section reads like a list rather than an argument
../_shared/sentence-role-and-story-flow.md	A paragraph may contain redundant, misplaced, missing, or disconnected sentences
../_shared/terminology-ledger.md	Terms, metrics, categories, or method names drift across sections

Workflow

1. Identify the audit scope: full paper, section, figure/table set, response package, or claim-evidence map.
2. Extract the paper's one-sentence thesis and stated contributions if present.
3. Build a story-spine audit before local style findings.
4. Build a claim-evidence audit table.
5. Check section jobs: Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, Methods, Experiments, Discussion, Conclusion.
6. Check figure/table responsibility against the claims they are asked to support.
7. Audit sentence roles when a paragraph is unclear: every sentence must be necessary, placed correctly, connected to neighboring sentences, and bounded by evidence.
8. Flag overclaims, missing anchors, section drift, table narration, caption overreach, sentence redundancy, terminology drift, and unsupported readiness claims.
9. Produce a prioritized action list and route each action to the correct skill.

Scored Audit Mode

Off by default. Use it only when the user explicitly asks for scores, a review panel, or reviewer simulation; otherwise keep the unscored verdict vocabulary. The protocol, lens table, and band anchors are in references/scored-audit-mode.md.

• Three reviewer lenses pass independently: method rigor, experimental evidence, contribution and positioning.
• Bands are heuristic triage anchored to listed findings, not acceptance predictions; no weighted total is produced.
• Material that was not inspected is CANNOT_DETERMINE, not a low band.

Default Output

Audit verdict
- Overall status: PASS / PASS_WITH_BLOCKERS / CANNOT_DETERMINE
- Highest-risk issue:
- Not verified:

Claim-evidence audit
| Claim | First stated | Method anchor | Experiment anchor | Figure/table anchor | Status | Repair route |

Story-spine findings
| Node | Present? | Evidence anchor | Break risk | Repair route |

Section-boundary findings
| Location | Symptom | Why it matters | Repair route |

Sentence role findings
| Sentence/span | Job | Needed because | Connection issue | Evidence boundary | Action |

Figure/table findings
| Item | Claim requested | Evidence visible/tabulated | Must not claim | Repair route |

Prioritized action list
| Priority | Action | Owner skill | Required input | Stop condition |