research-paper-lifecycle-skills

Agent skills for the whole research-paper lifecycle: discover, write, verify, submit, rebut, publish, and present with rules checked from live sources.
Field-agnostic, citation-aware, and designed as a copilot: you stay the author, the agent does the careful checking.

_{Quick start · How it works · All 42 skills · Workflows · Integrations · Website · Launch kit · Discussions · LLMs.txt · Boundaries}

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Why this exists

Most AI writing tools stop at the draft. Papers get rejected after that: a page over the limit, an author name left in a double-blind PDF, a missing checklist, a hallucinated citation, a broken artifact, or a camera-ready step nobody had time to read.

research-paper-lifecycle-skills gives compatible agents a structured playbook for the research work around the paper. It can search and verify sources, tighten writing without changing claims, check venue rules against live CFPs or author instructions, triage reviews, prepare artifacts, and turn a finished paper into slides, scripts, Q&A practice, or a poster.

Project website: https://shaishavmaisuria.github.io/research-paper-lifecycle-skills/ AI-readable summary: https://shaishavmaisuria.github.io/research-paper-lifecycle-skills/llms.txt Full LLM context: https://shaishavmaisuria.github.io/research-paper-lifecycle-skills/llms-full.txt AI research-tools guide: https://shaishavmaisuria.github.io/research-paper-lifecycle-skills/ai-research-tools.html Share and directory copy: LAUNCH.md Suggest a workflow: https://github.com/ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills/discussions/1

Who it is for: researchers, PhD students, labs, reviewers, and builders supporting publication workflows in any discipline with public venue guidance. The examples are academic-paper shaped, but the checks are intentionally general: sourced rules, verified citations, local outputs, and human sign-off.

Quick start (60 seconds)

# Any Agent Skills-compatible environment
npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills

# See what is included
npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --list

# Install one skill
npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --skill preflight-check

# Install into a supported agent target
npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent codex
npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent cursor
npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent gemini
npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent claude-code

Claude Code plugin marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills
/plugin install paper-submission@research-paper-lifecycle-skills

Then ask in plain language:

Will this get desk-rejected at an IEEE conference? Check my main.tex against this CFP.

The right skill should trigger itself, load its SKILL.md, run any relevant helpers, and return a sourced report.

No paper yet? Start with any paper folder

You do not need a bundled template. Put your draft files in a normal project folder and let the skills build the research workflow around it.

1. Create the basics: main.tex or a manuscript draft, plus refs.bib if you already have references.
2. Set the context: ask for paper-profile, then say the target venue, field, contribution type, and deadline if you know them.
3. Run the first checks: ask "verify refs.bib", "find missing related work", "write the abstract for SIGSPATIAL", or "preflight my paper".

How it works

1. Skills: one folder per task. Each SKILL.md tells the agent when to use it, what to do, what to verify, and what not to touch.
2. Live rules: venue-aware skills build or re-check requirements from the live CFP, author instructions, or public policy page. Unsourced facts stay marked as unverified.
3. Deterministic helpers: bundled scripts handle repeatable checks such as citation resolution, anonymization linting, page-budget maps, timeline math, and dashboard rendering.
4. Local workspace: generated reports go into paper-workspace/; paper preferences and lessons can live in .paper-memory/. Both stay with the user's paper, not in this package.

Find the skill you need

Open the linked SKILL.md for trigger rules, process, guardrails, references, and bundled scripts. The complete public package currently contains 42 skills.

Start here

I want to...	Skill
Run the whole lifecycle with checkpoints	orchestrate-paper
Get one overall paper-health report	assess-paper
Capture paper positioning and preferences	paper-profile
Run Researcher and Writer reflection passes	reflect-paper
Check whether a generated change actually improved	reflect-and-improve
Render a browser dashboard of outputs	render-workspace-html

Complete linked index

Stage	Skill	Use it for
Discover	find-papers	Search scholarly metadata and proceedings.
Discover	fetch-paper	Fetch legal open-access copies.
Discover	study-exemplars	Study strong papers from a target venue.
Discover	literature-review	Build a structured, citation-grounded review.
Write	draft-survey	Produce a ranked reading list and standalone survey draft.
Write	write-abstract	Draft, revise, or lint a venue-aware abstract.
Write	draft-related-work	Position related work against verified references.
Write	polish-prose	Tighten academic prose without changing claims.
Write	match-style	Align a draft to the author's voice or venue style.
Write	polish-tables-figures	Clean up figures, tables, captions, and crossrefs.
Write	refactor-structure	Repair argument structure and narrative flow.
Write	fit-page-limit	Compress or expand a paper to fit a target length.
Write	work-with-overleaf	Bring Overleaf projects into a local workflow.
Verify	verify-citations	Check BibTeX entries for fabricated or mismatched records.
Verify	check-originality	Check plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and text recycling.
Verify	verify-claims	Audit claims against evidence, results, and citations.
Submit	parse-cfp	Turn a live CFP into a requirements card.
Submit	add-venue-profile	Create or refresh a venue profile from live sources.
Submit	select-venue	Build a ranked venue and track shortlist.
Submit	tailor-to-venue	Adapt a draft to a venue, track, template, or limit.
Submit	preflight-check	Catch desk-reject risks before submission.
Submit	anonymize-paper	Sweep for double-blind identity leaks.
Submit	plan-submission	Build a deadline-aware submission timeline.
Submit	simulate-reviewers	Run a venue-calibrated mock review.
Submit	benchmark-paper	Compare draft shape to strong venue exemplars.
Respond	triage-reviews	Convert raw reviews into a response plan.
Respond	write-rebuttal	Draft rebuttals and author responses.
Publish	prepare-camera-ready	Walk through final-file and publication rails.
Artifacts	test-research-code	Make research code runnable and repeatable.
Artifacts	verify-results	Compare reported metrics with local outputs.
Artifacts	refactor-research-code	Clean research code for release without changing behavior.
Artifacts	prepare-artifacts	Package code/data for reproducibility review.
Present	make-slides	Turn a paper into a conference talk deck.
Present	write-talk-script	Write a timed speaker script.
Present	rehearse-qa	Practice hostile and curious Q&A.
Present	make-poster	Create and check a research poster.

Common workflows

New paper:        paper-profile -> literature-review -> write-abstract -> draft-related-work -> polish-prose
Survey draft:     find-papers -> draft-survey -> verify-citations -> polish-prose
Before submit:    parse-cfp -> tailor-to-venue -> anonymize-paper -> preflight-check
Quality pass:     verify-citations -> check-originality -> benchmark-paper -> simulate-reviewers -> assess-paper
Reflection:       reflect-paper -> polish-prose / verify-claims -> reflect-and-improve
Length pass:      fit-page-limit -> polish-prose / refactor-structure / polish-tables-figures
Overleaf:         work-with-overleaf -> preflight-check / verify-citations / polish-prose -> work-with-overleaf
Artifacts:        test-research-code -> verify-results -> refactor-research-code -> prepare-artifacts
Reviews are in:   triage-reviews -> write-rebuttal
Accepted:         prepare-camera-ready -> make-slides -> write-talk-script -> rehearse-qa -> make-poster
End to end:       orchestrate-paper

Usage examples

You ask	You get
"Will this get desk-rejected at an IEEE conference? Check my main.tex against this CFP."	A preflight report with template, page-limit, anonymization, checklist, and policy risks tied to live requirements.
"Verify refs.bib and flag fabricated or mismatched citations."	Entries checked against scholarly metadata sources, with wrong years, duplicates, suspicious records, and unresolved references surfaced.
"Write a ranked reading list and two-column arXiv survey draft on geospatial data conflation."	A verified reading list, taxonomy, original-prose survey draft, and clean bibliography grounded in real resolved papers.
"Humanize this section, but do not change any claims."	Cleaner academic prose with AI-tell phrasing removed while numbers, results, and citations stay fixed.
"I am one page over the limit; what should I cut?"	A section-budget map plus a ranked compression plan that preserves the paper's core evidence.
"Turn these reviews into a rebuttal plan with severity and effort."	A point-by-point matrix, prioritized response strategy, and handoff to the rebuttal skill.
"Show me an HTML dashboard of my progress."	A local paper-workspace/dashboard.html with stage progress, artifact links, and recent activity.

Worked example: idea to a clean SIGSPATIAL submission

I have a method and results for streaming-trajectory indexing.
Get it submission-ready for SIGSPATIAL.

1. paper-profile records contribution type, target audience, constraints, and risk appetite.
2. find-papers, literature-review, and verify-citations build a verified reference base.
3. write-abstract, draft-related-work, polish-prose, and match-style shape the draft without changing claims.
4. parse-cfp, tailor-to-venue, anonymize-paper, and preflight-check verify live requirements and desk-reject risks.
5. fit-page-limit, simulate-reviewers, benchmark-paper, and assess-paper produce the review-readiness pass.
6. render-workspace-html gives a local dashboard of the resulting paper-workspace/ outputs.

Integrations

This is an Agent Skills package, not a single-agent prompt bundle. The repository ships portable SKILL.md folders plus optional scripts and references, so any agent that understands the Agent Skills format can use it.

Environment	Install
Codex	npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent codex
Cursor	npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent cursor
Gemini CLI	npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent gemini
Claude Code	npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills --agent claude-code or /plugin install ...
Any compatible agent	npx skills add ShaishavMaisuria/research-paper-lifecycle-skills

Optional Claude Code plugin bundles currently exposed in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json: paper-search, paper-writing, paper-submission, and paper-presenting. Use the Agent Skills CLI above to install the complete 42-skill package.

Manual install for tools with their own skills directory:

mkdir -p "$YOUR_AGENT_SKILLS_DIR"
SKILL_NAME=preflight-check
cp -R "skills/$SKILL_NAME" "$YOUR_AGENT_SKILLS_DIR/"

Memory and dashboards

Most tools forget you when the chat ends. This package uses a local .paper-memory/ convention, described in paper-memory-convention.md, so skills can reuse paper positioning, writing preferences, decisions, and lessons without uploading them.

reflect-paper can run paired Researcher and Writer reflection passes: one checks evidence, novelty, positioning, and venue fit; the other checks story, structure, tone, and reader friction. reflect-and-improve then asks whether a change measurably helped before accepting it.

render-workspace-html turns paper-workspace/ into a local browser dashboard with progress, artifact cards, and recent activity. The dashboard is self-contained HTML, refreshable on request, and never uploaded by the skill.

What it won't do

• No acceptance predictions. Scores measure conformance, completeness, and quality signals; they do not predict reviewer decisions.
• No automatic submission. Skills can prepare, check, and explain, but they do not upload or submit a paper for you.
• No invented citations or venue facts. Unresolved citations and unsourced rules are marked as risks instead of being smoothed over.
• No bundled paper content. Paper PDFs and copyrighted corpora are not redistributed in this repository.
• No authorship laundering. The skills can polish language and surface issues, but you remain responsible for the work and final text.

Principles

1. Human-led. Skills draft, check, and explain; the author decides.
2. Citation-aware. Writing workflows route new references through verification instead of trusting plausible text.
3. Copyright-conscious. Paper content is fetched only from legal open sources, on demand, and is not bundled in this repository.
4. Venue-skeptical. Profiles and CFP facts can go stale; final rules must be checked live, with source links, before relying on them.
5. Portable. The repository ships skills, scripts, README visuals, and package metadata; not paper PDFs or cached research corpora.

Make it yours

The lifecycle is field-agnostic. To adapt it for another discipline, copy a skill folder, adjust its SKILL.md triggers and guardrails, and keep the same verification-first habit: sourced venue rules, verified citations, and local outputs only.

Repository layout

assets/                         README and community visuals
docs/                           GitHub Pages landing page and crawl files
skills/                         42 agent skills
  <skill>/SKILL.md               instructions and guardrails
  <skill>/references/            supporting guidance
  <skill>/scripts/               deterministic helper scripts
.claude-plugin/marketplace.json  optional Claude Code plugin bundle metadata
.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/          issue forms for bugs, docs, and skill requests
.github/workflows/              public package validation workflow
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md               community behavior expectations
CONTRIBUTING.md                  contribution guide
SECURITY.md                      vulnerability reporting policy
LICENSE                          Apache-2.0 license
NOTICE                           attribution notice
CITATION.cff                     citation metadata

Attribution and license

Copyright 2026 Shaishav Maisuria.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE.

If you redistribute this package or include substantial portions of these skills in another repository, keep the copyright/license notices and the NOTICE attribution file so the original work is credited.

Disclaimer: venue rules change every year. Always confirm against the live CFP or author instructions before submission.