paper-cover-letter

Paper Cover Letter

Scope

Use this skill when the manuscript is essentially complete and the user needs the letter that accompanies a journal submission: a new submission, a resubmission, or the cover note for a revised manuscript.

Read references/cover_letter_guide.md for move-by-move templates, length registers, placeholder rules, and the declaration block before drafting a full letter. For a one-line tweak, the core rules below are enough.

Use another skill when the task is primarily:

• a point-by-point response to reviewer comments or a rebuttal: use paper-response-to-reviewers (if available); that is a separate task, not a cover letter;
• manuscript storyline, contribution framing, or section structure: use paper-argument-reconstructor (if available) to settle the contributions first;
• TeX-safe or final-language polishing of the letter text: use paper-polisher (if available) for the closing pass;
• novelty-risk auditing of the underlying idea: use idea-novelty-auditor (if available).

A cover letter reuses contributions that the manuscript already supports. It does not establish new ones.

Verification Mode

This skill has two modes. By default it drafts the letter as described above. When the input is a cover letter another tool or skill has already drafted, switch to verification mode instead of regenerating:

• do not overwrite the other tool's wording;
• check it against this skill's rules: no overclaiming, novelty kept hedged, ethics statements treated as facts to confirm rather than assumed, and placeholders for every unconfirmed specific;
• report only the deviations; fix one in place only if it breaks a hard rule.

The suite's value is faithful, bounded output, not a competing rewrite. Verify rather than replace what a stronger generator already produced.

Non-Negotiable Rules

• Do not invent contributions, results, novelty, or journal-scope claims that the manuscript or the user does not support.
• Treat every originality and ethics statement as a factual claim: no prior publication, no concurrent submission, all-author approval, conflict-of-interest status, funding, and data availability. Do not assert these on the user's behalf. Insert them only when the user confirms them; otherwise leave an explicit [...] placeholder and flag it.
• Do not overclaim. Keep novelty hedged (for example, "to the best of our knowledge") and tie any superiority to the evaluated conditions, mirroring the manuscript's own claim boundaries.
• Leave every unconfirmed specific as a [...] placeholder: editor name, journal name, manuscript ID, article type, author names, emails, and dates. Do not fabricate them.
• Preserve the manuscript's terminology and claim strength. The letter must not promise more than the paper delivers.