This skill should be used when the user asks to "polish my paper for submission", "pre-flight check", "is my paper ready to submit", "final check before submission", "prepare for submission", or needs final preparation before submitting a paper. Performs a systematic pre-flight check covering formatting, citations, figures, metadata, and build verification. Produces a checklist report with suggested fixes.
Perform a final quality check on a research paper before submission. This is the last line of defense -- catch everything that would annoy a reviewer or cause a desk rejection.
Read .papermill.md (Read tool) for:
If .papermill.md does not exist, the pre-flight check can still run — infer the format from the manuscript files and ask the user for the target venue. The checklist works regardless. Suggest running /papermill:init to capture venue and format persistently.
Read the complete manuscript (Read tool).
Work through each category systematically. Report issues as they are found.
Run a clean build appropriate to the paper format (Bash tool). Use the manuscript path discovered in Step 1 (from .papermill.md or by scanning for .tex/.md/.Rmd files with Glob tool). Examples:
LaTeX papers:
latexmk -pdf <path-to-main.tex>
Markdown papers:
pandoc <path-to-paper.md> -o paper.pdf
R Markdown papers:
Rscript -e "rmarkdown::render('<path-to-paper.Rmd>')"
Report:
Present the checklist results:
Pre-Flight Report
Status: [Ready / Issues found]
Passing: N/M checks passed Issues:
- [issue + suggested fix]
- [issue + suggested fix] ...
Offer to fix issues directly:
After all issues are resolved:
stage to submission in .papermill.md (Edit tool).Paper is polished and ready. Final steps:
- Submit: Follow the venue's submission instructions.
/papermill:venue: If you haven't selected a venue yet, do so now.- Archive: Consider creating a git tag marking the submitted version.