self-review

Self-Review Skill

Check the user's own manuscript before submission and produce an actionable list of anticipated reviewer comments, each with a specific fix — not a written review.

Optional Flags

• --fix: after the report, apply fixes for every issue with fixable_by_ai: true, editing the manuscript in place, then report a diff summary. Never fix fixable_by_ai: false issues (missing data, design flaws). Maximum 2 fix-and-re-review iterations; if the score is still below threshold after the second, stop and report what remains as structural (inside /write-paper this routes to Phase 7.4a Audit Recovery).
• --json: also emit the structured JSON block (Phase 3c). Default when called from /write-paper Phase 7.
• --panel: run the multi-agent panel review (Phase 2.6) — domain-expert reviewers in parallel plus an editor synthesis — instead of the single-pass review. Opt-in and off by default, because it spawns N reviewer agents + 1 editor and costs several times more tokens; reserve it for a high-stakes final pass on a top-tier target. Do not combine with --fix: a panel diagnoses and prioritizes; run --fix as a separate pass once the author has triaged the panel's findings.

Severity Framing

• Fatal: a design flaw existing data cannot fix (data leakage that invalidates all results, no reference standard, label–feature circularity). Submission would likely be rejected. Reserve Fatal for true design-level problems.
• Fixable: significant but addressable with existing data (missing calibration, unclear exclusion criteria, absent CIs, incomplete reporting). Most issues are Fixable.

Two Objectives: the Floor and the Ceiling

The floor (categories A–K and the gates of Phases 2.5–2.5f) minimizes rejection-for-cause — fabricated citations, numbers that do not reconcile, overclaims, missing checklist items, leakage — and much of it works by adding a hedge, caveat, disclosure or audit trail. Iterated, that over-hardens a manuscript: every finding is correct, yet the whole reads as a defensive audit (over-hedged, audit trail in the body, Abstract buried under caveats, the strongest robustness result hidden in Limitations). The ceiling pass (category L / Phase 2.5g) runs after the floor gates, reads the accurate manuscript as a whole, and recommends only SUBTRACTION — REMOVE, MOVE, or TIGHTEN. It is advisory, never blocks, and cannot relax a floor gate. Report its findings as their own block (Phase 3), not folded into the "add this" comments. Phase 2.5i then reads the floor + ceiling state to declare the loop done, including a zero-edit PASS.