paperlint 2.0.0

package/skills/find-venue/SKILL.md.spec.ts

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+// Compiled to SKILL.md by `vigiles compile`. Edit THIS file, never the markdown.
+//
+// Adopted 2026-08-17 as part of the second batch. The body is the previous SKILL.md
+// VERBATIM, so the compiled diff shows only what the compiler adds. No `disallowedTools`
+// fence yet: the field exists on `SkillSpec` as of the branch `claude/skill-disallowed-tools`
+// but is not in a release `mine` installs, so adding it here would not compile.
+import { experimental_skill } from "vigiles/spec";
+
+export default experimental_skill({
+  name: "find-venue",
+  description:
+    "Discover and rank real venues for a given paper, scored by authorship credit not just prestige. Fetch candidate CFPs (WebSearch/WebFetch), capture deadline / page limit / paper-type fit / indexing (ACM DL / IEEE Xplore / archival vs non-archival) / double-blind / remote-attendance / selectivity, then rank by credit-weight (peer-reviewed + indexed + parent-venue prestige) × topic fit × accept-probability × deadline feasibility × remote-friendliness. Emit a comparison table and a keep/switch recommendation. Encodes: workshop newness does NOT hurt authorship; non-archival workshops rank LOW; the prestige move is to EXTEND the accepted paper later, not hold out. Compose with research-ideate (upstream), plan-paper-timeline, the submit-paper venue data cards (submit-paper/references/venues/<venue>.md), and extend-paper.",
+  tools: [
+    "Read",
+    "Write",
+    "Grep",
+    "Glob",
+    "WebSearch",
+    "WebFetch",
+    "Agent",
+    "Bash(node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/announce.mjs:*)",
+    "Bash(node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/ledger.mjs:*)",
+  ],
+  body: `
+# find-venue — rank real venues by what earns the credit, then keep or switch
+
+## Run me
+
+🔴 FIRST, before any other step:
+
+\`\`\`
+node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/announce.mjs find-venue <dir>
+\`\`\`
+
+An advisory pass cannot be observed failing — silence is both its error state and its normal
+state — so starting is an event, and events get written down.
+
+The \`<dir>\` argument is **optional in spirit**: this skill can run before a paper directory exists, so
+pass whichever directory the work lives in, or \`.\`. The ledger row is written either way, and a plain
+dot is more honest than an invented path.
+
+Takes a paper (or the candidate venue *types* from \`research-ideate\`) and finds the best real place to
+submit it. "Best" here means **best for the publication record**, which is not the same as most prestigious —
+an indexed workshop you can actually hit beats a top conference whose deadline already closed. This
+skill produces a ranked table and a keep/switch call; it does NOT do the submission mechanics (that's
+\`submit-paper\` + the venue card).
+
+Grounding: the authorship criterion — why archival + indexed is the whole game.
+
+## Gather candidates (fetch, don't guess)
+
+\`WebSearch\` / \`WebFetch\` the open CFPs for the paper's topic + the current cycle. For EACH candidate
+capture, from the actual CFP page:
+- **Deadline** (in AoE; convert to your local time for feasibility).
+- **Page limit** and required format (ACM sigconf / IEEE / other) — a full-paper limit vs a
+  short/WIP/workshop limit changes what you must produce.
+- **Paper-type fit** — does the CFP call for measurement/benchmark/short/WIP/full papers of this shape?
+- **Indexing** — the single most load-bearing field. Does acceptance land in **ACM DL / IEEE Xplore /
+  archival proceedings** (counts for authorship) or is it **non-archival** (talk-only, no indexed
+  proceedings — does NOT count)?
+- **Double-blind?** — determines anonymization work (see \`anonymization.md\`).
+- **Remote attendance** — can the author present/attend without international travel?
+- **Selectivity / prestige** — the parent venue's tier (workshop @ CCS/ASE/FSE inherits weight).
+
+## Rank
+
+Score each candidate by:
+
+\`\`\`
+rank = credit-weight × topic-fit × accept-probability × deadline-feasibility × remote-friendliness
+\`\`\`
+
+- **credit-weight** = (peer-reviewed? — required) × (indexed/archival? — required) × parent-venue
+  prestige (a bonus, not a gate). **Non-archival ⇒ credit-weight ≈ 0** — it earns no authorship credit,
+  so it sinks to the bottom no matter how nice the CFP reads.
+- **topic-fit** — how squarely the paper matches the CFP scope (a stretch fit raises reject risk).
+- **accept-probability** — realistic odds given the paper's maturity and the venue's bar.
+- **deadline-feasibility** — can the paper (and artifact) be ready by the deadline? A great venue you
+  miss is a zero.
+- **remote-friendliness** — remote-OK is a real weight here, not a footnote.
+
+### Facts to encode while ranking
+- **Workshop newness does NOT hurt the authorship criterion.** A brand-new workshop's indexed
+  proceedings count the same; venue prestige only matters at final merits, never for authorship. Do not
+  down-rank a venue just for being new.
+- **Non-archival workshops rank LOW for authorship** — no indexed proceedings, no credit. A great talk
+  slot with no DOI is worth little to the dossier.
+- **Prestige is a later move, not a hold-out.** Do NOT sit on a finished paper waiting for a fancier
+  venue. Ship to the best-fit archival venue open now, then **EXTEND** the accepted paper (≥30% new) to
+  a higher-prestige venue as a *second, stronger* publication — see \`extend-paper\`. Two indexed papers
+  (workshop → conference) beat one that missed its window.
+
+## Output
+
+1. **Comparison table** — one row per candidate: venue, parent, deadline (AoE + local), page limit,
+   type fit, **indexed? (Y/N + where)**, double-blind, remote, selectivity, computed rank.
+2. **Keep/switch recommendation** — the top-ranked venue with the one-line reason, and (if the paper
+   already has a target) an explicit **keep** or **switch** verdict against it. Note the intended
+   \`extend-paper\` upgrade target for later.
+
+## Record the verdict
+
+🔴 LAST step, once the deliverable exists:
+
+\`\`\`
+node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/ledger.mjs record find-venue <dir> FINDING <count> <report-path>
+node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/ledger.mjs record find-venue <dir> ABSTAINED <reason> "<one line>"
+\`\`\`
+
+🔴 **There is no PASS.** A shortlist is a set of findings about the world, not a certificate that
+the venue question is settled.
+
+**FINDING** — the sweep produced a ranked shortlist with an explicit keep/switch call; \`<count>\` is
+the number of candidates ranked and \`<report-path>\` the comparison table. Add \`--blocking\` when
+nothing open clears the peer-reviewed + indexed gate — a real answer, and not an empty run.
+**ABSTAINED** — \`no-witness\`: CFPs were read and no candidate could be ranked either way.
+\`input-missing\`: there is no paper description to match venues against.
+
+Record the whole table's path, not just the winner. The next sweep starts from the candidates that were
+dropped and why, and a verdict with no table behind it cannot be re-checked when a deadline moves.
+
+## Rules
+- Fetch every CFP fact from the real page; never invent a deadline, page limit, or indexing status.
+- Indexed + peer-reviewed is a gate, not a tiebreaker — a non-archival venue cannot win on charm.
+- Don't hold a finished paper hostage to prestige; ship archival now, extend later.
+- A missed deadline is a zero — weight feasibility honestly against the paper's real readiness.
+- Convert deadlines to your local time so \`plan-paper-timeline\` can schedule against them.
+
+## Compose with
+- \`research-ideate\` (upstream) — consumes its candidate venue *types* and sharpest framing.
+- \`plan-paper-timeline\` — feed it the chosen deadline to back-plan the work.
+- \`submit-paper\` venue data cards (\`submit-paper/references/venues/<venue>.md\`, e.g. \`agenticdev.md\`,
+  \`aisec.md\`) — the winner gets a venue-specific data card with its HotCRP quirks; save a new one per
+  venue as plain data, not a new skill.
+- \`extend-paper\` — the prestige-upgrade target this skill names but defers.
+
+## Provenance
+The **AgenticDev 2026 @ ASE** venue decision was made by a **9-agent analysis** that checked every open
+venue against this exact rubric. It **kept AgenticDev** — nothing open beat it on fit × archival ×
+timeline: NeurIPS Eval had already **closed**, and FSE/MSR each needed a **full paper** (wrong type /
+too much scope for the deadline). The prestige upgrade was deliberately deferred to an **extension to
+MSR/NeurIPS 2027**, not a switch — proving the rule: ship the best-fit archival venue open now, extend
+later. **AISec 2026 @ ACM CCS** confirmed the archival-weight logic at a top-tier security bar. Both
+papers are indexed proceedings; neither was down-ranked for the workshop's newness.`,
+});

package/skills/find-venue/find-venue.eval.mjs

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+/**
+ * find-venue — the PAID tier: does this skill's description actually fire?
+ *
+ * COLOCATED ON PURPOSE (vigiles decides coverage by placement as of 2026-08-11).
+ * The prompts live in `.claude/lib/skill-trigger-cases.mjs` so all 21 cases
+ * are reviewed as one table where collisions between siblings are visible;
+ * copying them here would recreate the drift that rule exists to prevent.
+ *
+ * Measures recall (fires on its own territory) AND precision (stays quiet on a
+ * colliding sibling's territory), against the REAL `.claude` harness so the skill
+ * competes with every other installed description — an isolated run overstates
+ * recall and understates false positives.
+ *
+ * Costs money; not CI.
+ *   node .claude/skills/find-venue/find-venue.eval.mjs [trials]
+ */
+import { runSkillTriggerEval } from "../../lib/skill-eval-kit.mjs";
+
+await runSkillTriggerEval("find-venue");

package/skills/find-venue/find-venue.harness.mjs

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+/**
+ * find-venue — the free, deterministic tier. No model, no network.
+ *
+ * COLOCATED ON PURPOSE. vigiles decides coverage by PLACEMENT as of 2026-08-11:
+ * a test that merely names a surface no longer counts, because that tier was
+ * crediting surfaces nothing touched. So each skill needs a file inside its own
+ * directory — this one.
+ *
+ * The assertions live in `.claude/lib/skill-checks.mjs` and are CALLED here with
+ * this skill's name. They are not copied: 22 copies of the same checks is the drift that
+ * module exists to avoid. (Until 2026-08-11 this was an env-var side channel into a
+ * 614-line file named after no surface; it is a function call now.)
+ *
+ * What this proves: this skill's frontmatter parses as strict YAML, its declared
+ * tool contract is sane, its pipeline wiring points at scripts that exist, and it
+ * announces/records under ITS OWN identity rather than a sibling's.
+ *
+ * What it does NOT prove: that the skill fires, or that its guidance produces a
+ * good result. Those need a real model — see `find-venue.eval.mjs`.
+ */
+import { checkSkill } from "../../lib/skill-checks.mjs";
+
+await checkSkill("find-venue");

package/skills/grade-paper-writing/SKILL.md

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+---
+name: grade-paper-writing
+description: Use when asking "does this paper read well?" / "is the writing any good?" / "it reads like a wall of text and jargon" / "grade the writing" on a draft. Grades WRITING CRAFT only — nine dimensions 1–5 (Title, Abstract, Intro architecture, Structure, Prose clarity, Jargon discipline, Landing-the-point, Figure economy, Honesty-without-hedge-stacking) against how the best-written papers read (Peyton Jones, McEnerney, Gopen & Swan; exemplars Trusting Trust, Carlini, Greshake), naming the offending sentence and the fix for each. Runs the PERSONA cold-read stall pass (a committed non-academic persona subagent, per-section) whose stall inventory — not the rubric number — is the readability gate other skills consume (pc-panel-review, paper-adversarial-review, harden-paper). Defaults to a blind multi-grader panel; after fixes, mandates the claims-preservation diff (row `claims`). NOT a content/defect review (paper-adversarial-review / pc-panel-review), NOT a structural cut plan (tighten-paper — run that first on a bloated draft), NOT venue-bar content strength (study-accepted-papers). Compose with harden-paper (which calls it), draft-paper (generative counterpart), render-paper.
+allowed-tools: [Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Agent, Skill, Bash(node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/announce.mjs:*), Bash(node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/ledger.mjs:*)]
+---
+
+<!-- vigiles:sha256:374531c7f64e998e compiled from skills/grade-paper-writing/SKILL.md.spec.ts -->
+
+# grade-paper-writing — grade how the paper READS, then fix it sentence by sentence
+
+## Run me
+
+🔴 FIRST, before any other step:
+
+```
+node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/announce.mjs grade-paper-writing <paper-dir>
+```
+
+An advisory pass cannot be observed failing — silence is both its error state and its normal
+state — so starting is an event, and events get written down.
+
+The review skills hunt scientific defects; `study-accepted-papers` checks whether the contribution clears
+the venue's bar. Neither tells you the paper is a slog to read. This skill does exactly that: it grades
+the **writing craft** against how the best-written papers actually read, and turns each low score into a
+concrete, sentence-level fix. Its target failure mode is the common one — *"a wall of text and jargon that
+doesn't drive home how crazy the situation is"* — which is a writing problem, not a science problem, and
+which the defect-hunting skills will pass right over.
+
+Grounding (do NOT re-derive — read it): `../paper-pipeline/references/writing-craft.md` holds the craft
+rules, the exemplar lessons, and the full nine-dimension rubric with 1/5 anchors. This skill applies it.
+
+## The frame to hold while grading (from the reference)
+The papers that make a human care share three moves: **(1) open on a problem/assumption the reader already
+holds; (2) break it with the single most visceral concrete instance, not an aggregate stat; (3) land one
+repeatable sentence.** Grade the draft against that trio, plus McEnerney's test — *does this create value
+for the reader, or just record the author's thinking?* — and Gopen/Swan's sentence mechanics (payload in
+the stress position, subject next to verb, one idea per sentence).
+
+## Execution model — run the graders as subagents (context forks), by default
+The blind panel (≥3 graders) and the cold-read stall pass **run in fresh subagents, not inline** — for two
+reasons: (a) grading dumps the whole paper + long stall inventories into context, which gunks up the main
+thread (context rot); (b) fresh context is the *point* of blind grading — a grader that saw the drafting or
+the "it improved from last draft" history anchors optimistic. **Spawn the graders in parallel** (one message,
+multiple Agent calls), with an adversarial model (Fable) for at least one seat. The main thread only
+**synthesizes the distilled scorecards** — it does not read the paper line-by-line for the grade itself.
+(This is the writing-axis instance of the session working rule: delegate heavy/ context-heavy work to
+subagents, keep the main thread for synthesis.)
+
+## The stall pass — specification
+
+This is the pass the author cannot run on himself, and it was the weakest thing in this skill: its
+spec was a pointer to a file that does not exist. On 2026-08-05 it had run six times on one paper,
+and the author then found eleven unreadable passages by eye in twenty minutes. Everything below is
+derived from that gap.
+
+### 🔴 Read the BUILT PDF, not the source
+
+**The stall pass reads the typeset pages.** The source is for locating the fix afterwards, never for
+judging the read. This was previously written as "read the `.tex`/`.md`, **or** run `render-paper`",
+and that *or* is why the pass kept missing what the author saw immediately: he reads the PDF.
+
+Things that exist only in the render, every one of which produces a real stall:
+
+- a paragraph broken across a column or a page, so its second half arrives with no antecedent;
+- a table or figure floated away from the sentence that introduces it — the caption is now the
+  reader's only context, and captions are written assuming the body;
+- a wall of text, which is a **visual** property: nine lines of unbroken prose in a narrow column
+  reads as impassable at a width where six does not;
+- a heading orphaned at the foot of a column;
+- how much of page 1 is numbers, which is what a reviewer's first impression is actually made of;
+- line numbers and two-column measure, which change where the eye stops.
+
+`repro/build-submission.sh` produces the PDF; `render-paper` turns pages into images. Judge from
+those. If only the source is available, say so in the report — a stall inventory taken from source
+is a weaker artifact and must not be presented as the same thing.
+
+### What the reader is given, and what is withheld
+
+**Given:** the typeset text. **Withheld:** the title's meaning, the abstract as framing, the venue,
+the research area, what the paper is trying to show, and every previous stall inventory.
+
+🔴 **Withholding is the mechanism, not politeness.** A grader handed the paper *plus* the framing
+reconstructs the idea from the surroundings and then reports that the sentence is clear. It cannot
+un-know. That is precisely how six passes in a row missed *"the state to remove is not the rule but
+its claim about itself"* — an expert reader supplies the missing idea for free and never notices
+they supplied it.
+
+Give the passage **as text in the prompt**, not as a file path. A path invites reading the
+neighbours, and reading the neighbours is how this pass fails silently.
+
+### The one question, per sentence
+
+> **What does this sentence claim? Restate it in your own words.**
+
+Not "did you stumble" — stumbling is a feeling, and a competent model does not feel it. Restatement
+is a task with a pass/fail. If the reader cannot restate without guessing, that is `CANNOT PARSE`
+and it is the finding.
+
+### Stall classes — the taxonomy the pass was missing
+
+The old pass logged only classes 1–3 and rated papers readable that were not. Classes 4–6 are where
+every 2026-08-05 defect lived.
+
+| # | class | test | real example |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| 1 | undefined term | a coined word used before any sentence says what it refers to | `admission` before the mechanism is described |
+| 2 | orphan number | a figure with no denominator or no named population | "over 90 runs … none of 48 … 12 of 12" — three populations, no map |
+| 3 | unreadable exhibit | a table cell or caption that needs the body to decode | — |
+| 4 | 🔴 **means nothing** | every word is known, the sentence parses grammatically, and the reader still cannot say what it claims | *"the state to remove is not the rule but its claim about itself"* · *"constructions nobody built"* |
+| 5 | 🔴 **sounds clever, carries nothing** | reads smoothly, feels like a payoff, and its content is a restatement or is borrowed from a section the reader has not read | *"nine deletions against four fixes is §5.1's cheap way out, winning again"* |
+| 6 | 🔴 **vague heading** | a heading naming no concrete object — no linter, no configuration, no agent, no file | *"Three answers, all of them after the fact"* · *"The configuration nobody resolves"* |
+
+Class 5 is the one a knowing reader always waves through, because it reads *well*. Ask for it by
+name — "which sentences sound clever but say less than they appear to?" — or it will not be reported.
+
+### Report shape
+
+Per stall: **location · quoted trigger · class · the reader's actual question · a one-line fix.**
+Then the **stall inventory + density per page**, which is the artifact other skills consume — not
+the rubric number. Then, separately, the sentences the reader could not restate at all: that list is
+the pass's headline, above any score.
+
+### The fix rule
+
+🔴 **A fix that removes the flagged wording and keeps the compression is not a fix.** Proven twice in
+one hour on 2026-08-05: *"not through any defect in how we write it, but because that is what English
+is"* → *"that is what English is for"* (tic gone, meaning inverted into nonsense); *"the agent turns
+out not to be the weak link"* → *"The agent obeys"* (three words, every threshold green, the wrong
+finding). **Rewrite the whole thought in plain words.** The construction is usually a symptom of a
+compressed idea, and decompressing it removes the construction as a side effect. Then re-read the
+replacement cold — the author is least able to judge his own repair exactly when he feels most sure.
+
+### Scope: whole paper here, diff continuously
+
+This pass covers the whole paper and is expensive, so it runs at gate time. The per-edit counterpart
+is the `cold-read-diff` skill, which asks the same question of just-changed paragraphs and is cheap
+enough to run every time. Running only this one leaves every sentence written after it unread, which
+is what happened.
+
+## How to run it
+
+1. **Read the actual draft** (the `.tex`/`.md`, or run `render-paper` to read the built pages as a reader
+   would). Grade the writing as written — never from a summary.
+2. **Run the cold-read stall pass FIRST — the full specification is below, under "The stall pass".**
+   It was previously a pointer to a reference section that did not exist, which is why the pass drifted
+   into "log where I stumbled" and stopped catching the class it exists for.
+2. **Score all nine dimensions 1–5** using the anchors in the reference, on the **absolute scale** defined
+   there (5 = best-in-field, **3 = the default for a solid paper**; most dimensions are 2–3). Weight Prose
+   (#5), Jargon (#6), Landing (#7) ×2 — that's where "wall of jargon" lives. Report raw /45 + weighted /60.
+   **Do NOT trust a single grade.** A lone grader — especially one that just wrote or verified the paper —
+   anchors optimistic; a 52/60-looking number is suspect until confirmed. So **when the score matters, run a
+   blind panel: ≥3 independent graders (fresh subagents, ideally an adversarial model like Fable), each
+   blind to any prior score, to each other, and to the "it improved" framing — given only the current page
+   and the field's best.** Report the **distribution (per-dimension + overall min / median / max)**, not one
+   number; flag any dimension where graders disagree by >1 as genuinely ambiguous. (See "Scoring
+   calibration" in the reference; this is the writing-axis analogue of `pc-panel-review`.)
+3. **For every dimension scoring ≤3, name the specific offending sentence or section** and write the fix —
+   not "tighten the prose" but the rewritten sentence, or "move the point from ¶3 to ¶1", or "gloss
+   `operation-normalized` in plain words at first use." Fixes must be applyable, not vibes.
+4. **Find the paper's three-move opportunities:** what held assumption could open it? what is its single
+   most visceral concrete instance (lead with that, not the mean)? what one sentence should the reader
+   quote? If the draft is missing any, that's the highest-leverage fix.
+5. **Flag the two prose traps by name:** (a) Attention-style dense contribution-less prose used where the
+   audience does NOT already care; (b) hedge-stacking ("may possibly in some cases potentially") — replace
+   each pile with one precise scope sentence.
+6. 🔴 **Run `prose-lint.mjs` and treat every FLAG as a finding, not as context.** It is wired into
+   `paper-lint` on paper edits, so its output arrives whether or not this skill was invoked — but the
+   skill is what must ACT on it. Its thresholds are sourced; a FLAG means the text sits above a
+   published human or machine baseline, which is a defect with a number attached, not an opinion.
+   Two entries in `THRESHOLDS` exist because this skill previously ran five times without either
+   firing: the `"not X, but Y"` density had **no threshold at all** and printed as a neutral line
+   while standing at 50.8 per 10,000 words against an LLM baseline of 7.8, and the lexicon missed
+   both variants a reader spotted by eye — the bare inversion (*"Reading the file is not the weak
+   point; judging it is"*) and the appositive that reaches headings (*"Admission, not translation"*).
+   A number printed without a threshold is prose; that is this project's own thesis, and the linter
+   was violating it.
+
+6a. 🔴 **`prose-lint.mjs` IS NO LONGER ALONE — seven of its twelve gating metrics moved
+   on 2026-08-26 into ESLint rules, and running only it shows you five twelfths.** A second
+   run is mandatory; without it, step 6 is incomplete:
+
+   ```
+   npx eslint "papers/*/paper.md" "papers/*/draft.md"
+   ```
+
+   From there come: `paper/citation-density` · `paper/unexplained-jargon` ·
+   `paper/multi-claim-sentence` · `paper/conceits` · `paper/hedge-density` ·
+   `paper/discourse-subject` · `paper/undefined-coinage` (file — `eslint-rules/paper-craft.mjs`).
+   Gain from the move — `file:line:col` on each finding: the old report printed the sentence head,
+   and you had to find it in the article by eye. Everything step 6b says about
+   meaning regression applies to them just the same: this is diagnosis, not objective.
+
+6b. 🔴 **A lint fix that costs meaning is a REGRESSION, and no linter can see it.** The metrics above
+   are diagnostics, never objectives. Optimising one directly is how a sentence gets worse while the
+   number gets better — and the number is exactly what makes it feel like progress.
+
+   Observed 2026-08-05, twice in one pass, both by the author of this rule:
+   - *"English cannot be exact — not through any defect in how we write it, but because that is what
+     English is"* became *"English cannot be exact; that is what English is for"*. The tic went. So
+     did the meaning: the new clause says English **exists in order to** be inexact, which is not a
+     claim anyone holds. The author's reaction was *«what the fuck does that even mean»*.
+   - *"Yet the agent turns out not to be the weak link"* became **"The agent obeys."** Three words,
+     zero flags, and the wrong finding — the experiment measured whether *writing a rule down* works,
+     while the replacement reads as a claim about agents being submissive.
+
+   **The procedure, and it is not optional:** after replacing a flagged sentence, read the
+   replacement as someone who has not read the paper. Does it still say the thing? Would they know
+   what it means? If the honest answer is no, the original was better and the flag stays open — an
+   open flag is a truthful state, and a passing metric over a sentence nobody can parse is not.
+   Prefer rewriting the whole **thought** in plain words to surgically excising the construction:
+   the tic is usually a symptom of a compressed idea, and decompressing it removes the tic as a
+   side effect.
+
+7. 🔴 **Put `WORST-SECTION: <section>` on the FIRST LINE of the report.** Machine-readable, one
+   section, lowercase, no decoration. `pipeline-check.mjs` reads the last four reports and raises
+   `repeat-finding` when the same section is worst twice running. This exists because the abstract
+   was named worst **five consecutive times**, was faithfully recorded in the scorecard all five
+   times, and was never once the next task. A review loop that only appends findings converges on a
+   paper whose defects are all thoroughly documented and none of them fixed. **Naming the worst
+   section is not the deliverable — a fix for it, or a recorded decision to ship with it, is.**
+
+8. **Run the avoid-list grep (mechanical).** Grep the source for the slop / web-slang / filler / hype words
+   in `../paper-pipeline/references/writing-craft.md` → "The avoid-list", and report every hit with its line number and a
+   replacement. These are scrutinize-words, not absolute bans — but each hit is a readability debit against
+   dimension #6 (Jargon) and the "engaging + human-readable" north star. (This session's miss that motivated
+   it: "listicle" survived into a submitted-ready AISec draft.)
+7. **Wall-of-text sweep (see `writing-craft.md` → "The wall-of-text check").** Flag any paragraph running
+   >~15 source lines / ~150 words or covering >3 sub-points — a visual wall the reader's eye slides off
+   (distinct from stall density). Prescribe the fix: break into run-in-headed chunks. Caps dimension #4.
+8. **Conclusion & quotability sweep (explicit — see `writing-craft.md` → "The conclusion & quotability
+   check").** Grade the CONCLUSION on its own, not just the intro: does it pay off in plain language, name the
+   stakes, point past the result, and hand the reader a concrete action — or is it a limp results-recap (a 2)?
+   Then check the abstract AND the conclusion each carry one extractable, quotable line (the "paste onto a
+   talk slide" test); if a surface has none, flag it and draft the candidate line. Report both explicitly —
+   these feed dimension #7 (which is graded on both surfaces). This is the axis that catches "the conclusion
+   isn't strong enough" and "nothing here is quotable."
+
+## Output
+1. **Scorecard** — nine dimensions with one-line justification each; raw /45 + weighted /60. When a blind
+   panel was run (the default when the score matters), report the **distribution** — per-dimension and
+   overall min / median / max across graders — not a single number, and name any dimension they split on.
+   Lead with the two or three dimensions dragging it down, ranked.
+2. **Cold-read stall inventory** — the ranked list of "what does that even mean?" points (location → quoted
+   trigger → reader's question → fix) plus the stall density per page. This is the most directly actionable
+   output; a fix pass works straight off it.
+2. **Sentence-level fix list** — for every ≤3 dimension: the offending text → the concrete rewrite/move.
+   Ordered by leverage (the fix that most improves how it reads first).
+3. **The three-move audit** — the assumption to open on, the visceral instance to lead with, the one
+   repeatable sentence — supplied or flagged as missing.
+4. **A one-paragraph verdict** — is this a pleasant read for a busy, skeptical reviewer yet, and the single
+   change that would move it most.
+5. **SAVE the report colocated — don't let it evaporate.** A grade run in a subagent reports into a
+   transcript that is gone next session. Write the scorecard + stall inventory + fix list to
+   **`<paper-dir>/reviews/<YYYY-MM-DD>-grade-paper-writing.md`** and link it from the paper's
+   `PIPELINE-STATUS.md` (Wc row). Same rule as `pc-panel-review`'s ledger and `analyze-sibling-paper`'s
+   `siblings/` — review artifacts live colocated and ride with the paper to camera-ready/extension.
+
+## Record the verdict
+
+🔴 LAST step, once the deliverable exists:
+
+```
+node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/ledger.mjs record grade-paper-writing <paper-dir> FINDING <count> <report-path>
+node .claude/skills/paper-pipeline/scripts/ledger.mjs record grade-paper-writing <paper-dir> ABSTAINED <reason> "<one line>"
+```
+
+**FINDING** — `<count>` is the number of entries in the PERSONA stall inventory, and `<report-path>`
+is that inventory. Add `--blocking` when a dimension scored 1–2, or stall density is over its cap.
+**ABSTAINED** — `no-witness`: the inventory came back empty. `blocked`: no persona reader was run,
+so there is no inventory — which is not an empty inventory and must never be filed as one.
+
+🔴 **There is no PASS**, and the distinction the two abstentions draw is the one that was being
+lost: "a reader stalled nowhere" and "nobody read it" produced the same word.
+
+🔴 **Record the stall count, never the rubric number.** The inventory is what `pc-panel-review`,
+`paper-adversarial-review` and `harden-paper` consume; a 44/60 in the ledger would let a paper whose
+readability gate is failing look clean to every skill downstream.
+
+`prose-lint.mjs` files separately as `grade-paper-writing/prose-lint`. One check, one row.
+
+## Rules
+- Grade **writing, not science.** A correct paper can still score a 2 here; say so. Don't drift into
+  content/defect review — that's `paper-adversarial-review` / `pc-panel-review`.
+- **Every low score comes with the offending sentence and its fix.** No abstract advice.
+- **Preserve claims.** Suggested rewrites must not change any result, number, or hedge — only how it reads.
+  (This mirrors the constraint on any prose rewrite of a real submission.)
+- **After applying sentence fixes, run the `claims` claim-preservation diff** (owner:
+  `../paper-pipeline/references/writing-craft.md` → "The claim-preservation diff") — an adversarial
+  (Fable) before/after diff verifying **no number moved, no hedge dropped, no claim strengthened, no
+  new absolute, no self-contradiction**. The fix pass is not done until it's clean; record it in the
+  `claims` row of the paper's `PIPELINE-STATUS.md`. This step is mandatory after EVERY rewrite, not optional.
+- **Respect the page budget.** Prefer fixes that cut or hold length; a paper at its page ceiling can't grow.
+- **Honesty over flattery.** If the abstract is a stat-wall, score it a 2 and show the five-move rewrite.
+
+## 🔴 The tell that says a machine wrote it: three findings in one sentence
+
+The single most reliable marker of LLM prose in a paper is **the citation tricolon** — separate
+findings packed into one sentence with a reference hung off each:
+
+> *Adherence has been measured directly more than once: it decays as a session proceeds [6], and
+> agents that undertake to follow a process frequently do not [7] — while a factorial study of the
+> file's own structure, varying size, position and ordering, found no effect at all [4].*
+
+Three unrelated results, one sentence, 48 words, a colon, a comma-splice and an em-dash contrast. It
+reads fluently and nothing survives it. Its cousin is the **noun pile with no verb**, which exists
+only to carry citations:
+
+> *Censuses, taxonomies and labellings of what these files contain [3, 11, 12, 18–20, 25, 34].*
+
+**Rule: one finding, one sentence.** If three works said three things, that is three sentences, and
+each says what the work found rather than that it exists. A citation group belongs to a claim, not to
+a list. When the related work genuinely is a survey, say what the surveys share and cite them once.
+
+Mechanical leg: `paper-lint`'s plain-language pass flags any sentence carrying three or more separate
+citation groups, or five or more reference numbers in under 45 words. It cannot judge whether the
+prose is *good*; it reliably catches this one shape, which is the shape that recurs.
+
+**And the words themselves, not only the sentences.** *Adherence* means *following the rules*. The
+"Jargon discipline" dimension below does not catch this, because the word looks perfectly at home —
+judgment slides right past it. What catches it is a list: `paper-lint` carries ~30 words with a plain
+English equivalent (adherence · utilise · demonstrates · constitutes · prior to · necessitates ·
+facilitates · methodology · leverage · albeit · comprise · entail · in order to …) and names the
+replacement in the nudge. Keep the list narrow — only words where the swap does not change meaning —
+and never rewrite a cited work's title to obey it.
+
+**Other markers of the same register, all cheap to check and all worth a pass:** nominalisation
+density (*an honest accounting of what the construction costs* — abstract nouns doing the work verbs
+should do), stock connectives (*furthermore*, *thereby*, *it is worth noting*), and statistics chained
+through a paragraph instead of sitting in a table. Numbers belong in a table the moment there are more
+than about six of them in one paragraph.
+
+
+## 🔴 The class the rubric could not see, and why it kept coming back (2026-08-04)
+
+The author of `compile-rules-2026` read the built abstract and wrote: *«what the f\*** does that
+even mean, no human would write it like that»*. He had said the same thing about the same paper
+**repeatedly**. Nine rubric axes, a persona cold-read at 5.9 stalls/page, an AI-tells counter and
+three tighten passes all scored the text and **none of them named the defect**, because every one of
+them measures words and sentences. The defect is not in the words.
+
+**The specimen, verbatim, and it passed every check we own:**
+
+> "Two findings about the agent come first, because they bind whatever else you build. Asked the
+> same question twice with identical inputs, a frontier model changes its verdict on 21.5% of rows,
+> so no harness that has a model adjudicate its own instructions can use one as the gate."
+
+Two separable failures:
+
+### 1. The text talks about the text (metadiscourse)
+
+*"Two findings come first, because they bind whatever else you build"* says nothing about rules
+files, agents, or repositories. It is the paper **narrating its own structure** — the reader is
+handed a table of contents where they expected a fact. This is Hyland's *frame marker*, and in this
+corpus it is the single most reliable smell of machine-drafted expository prose: an
+instruction-tuned model is rewarded for signposting, so it signposts where a writer would simply
+say the thing.
+
+**Countable.** Per section, count openers and connectives whose subject is the document rather than
+the world: *this paper · this section · we now turn · comes first · in what follows · the rest of
+this · as discussed above · it is worth noting · importantly*. Measured on this paper: **10 in the
+body**, and the abstract's opener was one. Target for an abstract or conclusion: **zero**. Body:
+under one per section, and every survivor must earn a reason.
+
+**Rewrite heuristic:** delete the frame and start at the fact. *"Two findings come first, because
+they bind whatever else you build. Asked the same question twice…"* → *"Asked the same question
+twice with identical inputs, a frontier model changes its verdict on 21.5% of rows."* Nothing is
+lost. The ordering was already visible — it is the order of the sentences.
+
+### 2. The qualification eats the claim
+
+*"…though that cell does not survive our own correction for multiplicity and we report it as
+suggestive (Appendix A.2)"* is 20 words of hedge welded onto a 20-word finding. Each hedge was
+added honestly, by a different review round, and none was wrong. Their **placement** is the defect, and no single round can see it.
+
+🔴 **The obvious diagnosis is wrong, and it was measured.** Peer review does **not** ratchet hedge
+words in. Keserlioglu, Kilicoglu & ter Riet (2019, *Research Integrity and Peer Review*, n = 446
+manuscript–publication pairs across 28 journals) found hedge density moving 2.06% → 2.13% — and
+non-significant after adjusting for journal characteristics. What review adds is **standalone
+limitation sentences**: 2.48 → 3.87 per paper. So the published norm is that qualification enters a
+good paper **as its own sentence**, not as particles inside a claim sentence. `compile-rules-2026`
+ran at **0.37%** hedge words against that 2.13% norm — it was never over-hedged by count. It was
+mis-**placed**: the caveat was welded into the result sentence, where it competes with the result for
+the stress position and wins.
+
+**Countable.** Caveats that are grammatically independent sentences versus caveats embedded as
+subordinate clauses (*though · while · although · albeit*) inside a sentence that also states a
+result. Target: all standalone. Also count sentences ending on a cross-reference, citation or hedge
+while the sentence's own number sits earlier — Gopen & Swan's stress position, spent on a pointer.
+
+**Rewrite heuristic — the order matters:** state the finding as a whole sentence, then qualify it in
+the **next** sentence. Never inside it. *"Violations went from 17% to 100%, back to the rate with no
+file at all. That is one cell of five, and it does not clear the multiplicity correction we
+pre-registered (Appendix A.2)."* Same words, same honesty, and the claim survives the reading.
+
+### 3. Phrases that reference an unstated alternative
+
+*"So we left the sentences alone"* — the reader has not been told what else might have been done to
+them, so "left alone" refers to nothing. Same author reaction, same day. **Check:** any *instead of ·
+rather than · left alone · we did not · not X but Y* whose rejected alternative is not stated within
+one sentence.
+
+### 🎯 The abstract and the conclusion are graded on a different scale
+
+They are the only two sections most readers finish, and the abstract is the only one every reviewer
+reads before forming a view. Grade them **separately and harder**:
+
+- **zero** frame markers, **zero** self-reference to the paper;
+- first sentence is about the world, never about the document;
+- no number arrives without the unit it counts (*"21.5% of rows"* — rows of what?);
+- the last sentence of each is a **conclusion**, not an announcement of one;
+- nothing may refer forward to a section the reader has not read.
+
+A body section may be merely clear. These two have to be **sharp**, and if the abstract survives a
+tighten pass marked `KEEP` three rounds running, that is evidence it was never really read — this
+one did, and it was the worst section in the paper by measured density both times.
+
+### What is NOT mechanizable here
+
+Whether a frame marker is load-bearing (*"we claim nothing there"* genuinely scopes a claim) and
+whether a hedge is honest or defensive. Count them, surface them, and leave the verdict to a reader.
+The counter's job is that nobody can say afterwards they did not know.
+
+## Compose with
+- `harden-paper` — the multi-axis pre-submit gate calls this as its *writing* axis (the one a defect-hunt
+  and a threat-model check both miss).
+- `draft-paper` — the generative counterpart (writes the prose); this grades it. Both cite the same
+  `../paper-pipeline/references/writing-craft.md`, so guidance and grading never diverge.
+- `paper-adversarial-review` / `pc-panel-review` — run those for scientific defects; run this for readability. Complementary axes, not redundant.
+- `render-paper` — build the PDF/PNGs first so you grade what the reviewer will actually see.
+
+## Provenance
+Built from the **AISec 2026 GateBench** polish run (2026-07): the author's verdict was "wall of text and
+jargon that doesn't drive home how crazy the situation is — real humans will be reading this." The rubric
+was grounded by dissecting Peyton Jones / McEnerney / Gopen & Swan and honestly grading exemplars
+(Attention = impact-not-prose; Trusting Trust / Carlini / Greshake = the real craft models), then applied
+as the instrument that graded the rewritten paper.