/review

name: review
description: Write domain-authentic review articles that synthesize rather than stack. Covers 10 scientific domains (physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, mathematics, computer_science, earth_environment, astronomy, economics, materials) with per-domain style guides mined from landmark reviews in RMP / Nat. Rev. X / Annu. Rev. / Chem. Rev. / Bull. AMS / etc. Use this skill when writing a survey / review / report that spans multiple primary papers.
compatibility: Pure prompt skill. No binaries, no scripts required at review-writing time.
allowed-tools: Read, Edit, Write, Glob, Grep

Review Skill

Stacking is the default failure mode of autonomous review projects: "Smith et al. did X, found Y. Jones et al. extended to Z..." paragraph after paragraph, with no unifying thesis and no synthesis of tensions. Top-tier reviews do the opposite — they lead with a claim, pull disparate work into one frame, and leave the reader smarter than when they started.

This skill encodes the **rhetorical and structural conventions** of landmark reviews across 10 domains, mined from real corpus text (RMP, Chem. Rev., Nat. Rev. X, Annu. Rev., Bull. AMS, Science / Nature Reviews, and the domain-specific tier-1 venues). Inject a domain's style guide, follow the 3-step pipeline, obey the hard rules — and the output should pass the Turing test for an editor at its target venue.

When to use which venue voice

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────┐
│  Target length / audience                        │  Voice           │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│  Monograph (50–150 pp), pedagogical, archival    │  RMP / Chem.Rev. │
│    → equations, boxes, glossary, deep derivation │  / Phys.Rep.     │
│  Specialist (20–40 pp), claim-dense, tutorial    │  Annual Reviews  │
│    → thesis-per-section, figure-rich             │                  │
│  Short assessment (5–15 pp), stance-forward      │  Nat. Rev. X /   │
│    → abstract-caliber thesis per ¶, citation-dense │  Trends / Curr.Op. │
│  Opinionated essay (5–20 pp), single author      │  Nat Comment /   │
│    → warm first-plural, polemical beat           │  Nobel lecture   │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

See `references/decision_tree.md` for full venue taxonomy.

The 3-step pipeline (mandatory)

Skip no step. Each exists because stacker projects skip exactly this step.

Step 1 — Outline with thesis per section (BEFORE any prose)

Produce `report/outline.md` first:

# <title>

## §1 Introduction
**Thesis:** <one sentence. What is this review claiming about the field?>
**Unifying framework:** <concept / equation / taxonomy that ties everything>
**Fold in:** Paper A (framework), Paper B (canonical result), …

## §2 <topic>
**Thesis:** <claim this section argues, not a topic label>
**Fold in:** Paper C, D, E
**Synthesis move:** <comparative_table | contrast_pair | unifying_equation | …>

…

**Gate:** do not draft prose until a PI / reviewer / user has signed off on this outline. This is the single most effective anti-stacking move — if you cannot articulate a thesis per section in one sentence, the section will stack.

Step 2 — Draft, reading domain style guide before each section

Before drafting §N:

1. Read `style_guides/<domain>.md` — the **entire** guide, every time, fresh. 2. Read §N's outline entry. 3. Write prose that obeys the guide's claim-leading, synthesis-move, and transition conventions. Quote primary papers only where a claim needs evidence, not to fill the paragraph.

Step 3 — Synthesis rewrite pass (POST-draft)

After the full draft:

1. For every paragraph, check its **first sentence**. If it starts with "Smith et al." / "Jones and coworkers" / "In [42]" / any author name → **rewrite it to lead with a claim about the phenomenon**, and push the citation to mid-paragraph or parenthetical. 2. For every section, check its **first paragraph**. If it starts with orientation ("This section discusses…") instead of thesis → **rewrite the first sentence to state the claim**. 3. For every section-to-section boundary, add a transition sentence that **names** the bridge (cause→effect / contrast / zoom-in / caveat / historical pivot). See `references/transition_moves.md`.

Hard rules

These are non-negotiable. Violations should trigger rewrite before output.

1. **No paragraph begins with an authorship phrase.** "Smith et al." / "Jones and coworkers" / "In [42]" as paragraph-openers are banned. Lead with a claim about the phenomenon; attribute parenthetically or mid-paragraph. 2. **No section begins with "This section…" / "We now discuss…" / "Here we…"** Lead with a thesis sentence about the field. 3. **No uncited claim, no un-claiming citation.** Every citation must support a specific claim. Every claim beyond common knowledge gets a citation. Drive-by citations ("for a review see [7, 8, 9]" without claim anchoring) are a stacker tell — use them sparingly and only at section boundaries. 4. **Fold, don't list.** When multiple papers make compatible findings, synthesize them into one claim with a shared citation cluster. When they disagree, make the tension the subject of the paragraph. 5. **Use domain voice.** If writing physics, obey `style_guides/physics.md` on citation style (narrative vs parenthetical), equation density, section title voice. Do not import chemistry's taxonomy-monograph habits into a physics RMP draft.

Style guides (one per domain)

Auto-loaded by the agent when `<domain>` is set. Each is ~1,000–2,000 words of prose distilled from 8–12 landmark reviews in that domain.

| Domain | Venues mined | |---|---| | `physics` | RMP, Phys. Rep., Nat. Rev. Phys., Annu. Rev. Cond. Matt., Quantum, Science | | `chemistry` | Chem. Rev., Chem. Soc. Rev., Nat. Rev. Chem., Science | | `biology` | Cancer Discov., Nat. Rev. Gene