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proofread

Run the proofreading protocol on academic writing — papers or manuscripts. Checks grammar, typos, layout issues, consistency, and academic writing quality. Produces a report without editing files. Make sure to use this skill whenever the user wants surface-level writing errors found — not substantive academic critique. Triggers include: "proofread", "check for typos", "grammar check", "look for errors in my draft", "proofread all", "polish this", "check my writing", "are there any mistakes", "proofread before I send this", or when the user wants a clean-up pass rather than feedback on argument

Published by brycewang-stanford ↗brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

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proofread

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Use proofread to review [manuscript path] and produce a detailed, non-editing proofreading report with locations, proposed fixes, categories, and severity; save only the report.

Required inputs

  • [manuscript path]

User-approved starter prompt based on a pinned source version; check current skill requirements before running. Task evidence ↗

SKILL.md

name: proofreaddescription: >-  Run the proofreading protocol on academic writing — papers or manuscripts. Checks grammar, typos, layout issues, consistency, and academic writing quality. Produces a report without editing files. Make sure to use this skill whenever the user wants surface-level writing errors found — not substantive academic critique. Triggers include: "proofread", "check for typos", "grammar check", "look for errors in my draft", "proofread all", "polish this", "check my writing", "are there any mistakes", "proofread before I send this", or when the user wants a clean-up pass rather than feedback on arguments or methods.argument-hint: "[filename, 'all', or path to manuscript]"allowed-tools: ["Read", "Grep", "Glob", "Write", "Task", "AskUserQuestion"]

Proofread Academic Writing

Run the mandatory proofreading protocol on papers or manuscripts. Produces a report of all issues WITHOUT editing any source files.

Steps

  1. Identify files to review:

    • If $ARGUMENTS is a specific filename: review that file only
    • If $ARGUMENTS is all: review all files in manuscripts/ and Quarto/ (if it exists)
    • If $ARGUMENTS is a file in manuscripts/: treat as manuscript (not slides)
    • If $ARGUMENTS is empty or ambiguous and multiple files exist, use AskUserQuestion:
      • header: "Files"
      • question: "Which files should I proofread?"
      • multiSelect: true
      • options: list up to 4 found files (label: filename, description: directory and file type). User can select multiple or choose "Other" to specify a path.

  2. For each file, launch the proofreader agent that checks for:

    GRAMMAR: Subject-verb agreement, articles (a/an/the), prepositions, tense consistency TYPOS: Misspellings, search-and-replace artifacts, duplicated words LAYOUT ISSUES: Overfull hbox (LaTeX slides/manuscripts), content exceeding slide boundaries (Quarto), table/column overflow in manuscripts CONSISTENCY: Citation format, notation, terminology, variable names matching table column names ACADEMIC QUALITY: Informal language, missing words, awkward constructions

  3. Produce a detailed report for each file listing every finding with:

    • Location (line number or section heading)
    • Current text (what's wrong)
    • Proposed fix (what it should be)
    • Category and severity

  4. Save each report to quality_reports/:

    • For .tex slide files: quality_reports/FILENAME_report.md
    • For .qmd slide files: quality_reports/FILENAME_qmd_report.md
    • For manuscript files: quality_reports/FILENAME_proofread.md

  5. IMPORTANT: Do NOT edit any source files. Only produce the report. Fixes are applied separately after user review (see rules/proofreading-protocol.md).

  6. Present summary to the user:

    • Total issues found per file
    • Breakdown by category
    • Most critical issues highlighted