survey-paper-writing

Survey Paper Writing

Scope

Use this Skill for a survey, review, tutorial, or literature-synthesis manuscript. The core contribution is evidence-backed organization and synthesis across papers. Do not require baselines, a proposed model, five seeds, or ablations unless the requested survey includes an original benchmark or other empirical study.

Use research-paper-writing for an empirical method paper. Use paper-material-package through Search when the source package is missing or does not support the requested coverage. Never invent a citation, result, taxonomy assignment, or field-wide conclusion.

Required Inputs

Inspect these exact-cwd artifacts:

• ref_papers/source.json
• ref_papers/paper-notes.md
• selected readable sources under ref_papers/text/ and PDFs when needed
• existing files under manuscript/
• the topic, review scope, expected paper count, date/source constraints, target audience or venue when supplied, and drafting authority carried by dispatch

Follow another existing layout only when the dispatch explicitly identifies it.

Survey Readiness Gate

Draft survey prose only when all required conditions hold or the dispatch records an explicit accepted limitation:

• The intended review scope and exclusions are clear enough to judge coverage.
• The material package meets the expected paper count, or the accepted shortfall and its consequence are explicit.
• source.json and paper-notes.md have one-to-one stable note_key coverage.
• Papers used for substantive claims have complete factual cards and readable sources with evidence locators.
• Foundational work and relevant recent work are represented for the stated scope; frontier-only search results are not presented as field-complete.
• Bibliographic metadata and planned citation keys are verified.
• The dispatch explicitly authorizes the requested full draft or section. An initial request to complete the survey counts as full-draft authority.

Partial cards may remain as metadata-only context, but do not use them to support claims beyond their available evidence. If the gate fails, write manuscript/writing-readiness-report.md with the verdict, usable coverage, blocking gaps, a targeted Search request, and the drafting scope currently safe.