Paper Plan: From Review Conclusions to Paper Outline

Generate a structured, section-by-section paper outline from: $ARGUMENTS

Constants

• REVIEWER_MODEL = gpt-5.4 — Model used via Codex MCP for outline review. Must be an OpenAI model.
• TARGET_VENUE = ICLR — Default venue. User can override (e.g., /paper-plan "topic" — venue: NeurIPS). Supported: ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ACL, AAAI, ACM, IEEE_JOURNAL (IEEE Transactions / Letters), IEEE_CONF (IEEE conferences).
• MAX_PAGES — Page limit. For ML conferences: main body to Conclusion end (excluding references, appendix). ICLR=9, NeurIPS=9, ICML=8. For IEEE venues: references ARE included in page count. IEEE journal Transactions ≈ 12-14 pages total, Letters ≈ 4-5 pages total; IEEE conference ≈ 5-8 pages total (including references).

Inputs

The skill expects one or more of these in the project directory:

1. NARRATIVE_REPORT.md or STORY.md — research narrative with claims and evidence
2. review-stage/AUTO_REVIEW.md — auto-review loop conclusions (fall back to ./AUTO_REVIEW.md if not found)
3. Experiment results — JSON files in figures/, screen logs, tables
4. idea-stage/IDEA_REPORT.md — from idea-discovery pipeline (if applicable) (fall back to ./IDEA_REPORT.md if not found)
5. Compact files (if available): idea-stage/IDEA_CANDIDATES.md (fall back to ./IDEA_CANDIDATES.md if not found), findings.md, EXPERIMENT_LOG.md — preferred over full files when present, saves context window

If none exist, ask the user to describe the paper's contribution in 3-5 sentences.

Orchestra-Guided Writing Overlay

Keep the existing insleep workflow and outputs, but use the shared references below to improve the quality of the story and outline.

• Read ../shared-references/writing-principles.md when framing the one-sentence contribution, Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, or hero figure.
• Read ../shared-references/venue-checklists.md before freezing the outline for a specific venue.
• Only load these references when needed; do not paste their full contents into the working draft.

Optional: Style reference (— style-ref: <source>, opt-in)

Lets the user steer the structural layout of the outline (section ordering, subsection density, theorem-environment density, figure budget, citation style) toward a reference paper. Default OFF — when the user does not pass — style-ref, do nothing differently from before.

Only when — style-ref: <source> appears in $ARGUMENTS, run the helper FIRST, before drafting the outline:

if [ ! -f tools/extract_paper_style.py ]; then
  echo "error: tools/extract_paper_style.py not found — re-run 'bash tools/install_aris.sh' to refresh the '.aris/tools' symlink (added in #174), or copy the helper manually from the ARIS repo" >&2
  exit 1
fi
CACHE=$(python3 tools/extract_paper_style.py --source "<source>")
case $? in
  0) ;;                                       # use $CACHE/style_profile.md as structural guidance
  2) echo "warning: style-ref skipped (missing optional dep)" >&2 ;;
  3) echo "error: --style-ref source failed; aborting outline" >&2 ; exit 1 ;;
  *) echo "error: helper failed unexpectedly; aborting outline" >&2 ; exit 1 ;;
esac

Sources accepted: local TeX dir / file, local PDF, arXiv id (2501.12345 or arxiv:2501.12345), http(s) URL. Overleaf URLs and project IDs are rejected — clone via /overleaf-sync setup <id> first and pass the local clone path.

Strict rules (full contract in tools/extract_paper_style.py docstring):

• Use style_profile.md as structural guidance only when proposing the outline's section list, subsection counts, theorem density, figure budget.
• Never copy prose, claims, examples, section names verbatim, or terminology from anything reachable through the cache. The user's narrative is the only source of substance.
• Never pass — style-ref (or the cache contents) to reviewer / auditor sub-agents. Cross-model review independence (../shared-references/reviewer-independence.md) requires reviewers see only the artifact and the user's prompt.

Workflow

Step 1: Extract Claims and Evidence

First check for CLAIMS_FROM_RESULTS.md — if it exists (generated by /result-to-claim at the end of Workflow 2), use it as the starting point for claims. This file contains validated claims already mapped to experiment evidence. Merge with any additional claims from the narrative documents below.

If CLAIMS_FROM_RESULTS.md does not exist, extract claims from scratch:

Read all available narrative documents and extract:

1. Core claims (3-5 main contributions)
2. One-sentence contribution (the single sentence that best states what the paper contributes)
3. Evidence for each claim (which experiments, which metrics, which figures)
4. Known weaknesses (from reviewer feedback)
5. Suggested framing (from review conclusions)

Build a Claims-Evidence Matrix:

| Claim | Evidence | Status | Section |
|-------|----------|--------|---------|
| [claim 1] | [exp A, metric B] | Supported | §3.2 |
| [claim 2] | [exp C] | Partially supported | §4.1 |

Step 2: Determine Paper Type and Structure

Based on TARGET_VENUE and paper content, classify and select structure.

Before committing to a structure, apply the narrative principle from ../shared-references/writing-principles.md:

• The paper should tell one coherent technical story.
• By the end of the Introduction, the outline should make the What, Why, and So What explicit.
• Front-load the most important material: title, abstract, introduction, and hero figure. Reviewers often form a judgment before reading the full method.

IMPORTANT: The section count is FLEXIBLE (5-8 sections). Choose what fits the content best. The templates below are starting points, not rigid constraints.

Empirical/Diagnostic paper:

1. Introduction (1.5 pages)
2. Related Work (1 page)
3. Method / Setup (1.5 pages)
4. Experiments (3 pages)
5. Analysis / Discussion (1 page)
6. Conclusion (0.5 pages)

Theory + Experiments paper:

1. Introduction (1.5 pages)
2. Related Work (1 page)
3. Preliminaries & Modeling (1.5 pages)
4. Experiments (1.5 pages)
5. Theory Part A (1.5 pages)
6. Theory Part B (1.5 pages)
7. Conclusion (0.5 pages)
— Total: 9 pages

Theory papers often need 7 sections (splitting theory into estimation + optimization, or setup + analysis). The total page budget MUST sum to MAX_PAGES.

Theory papers should:

• Include proof sketch locations (not just theorem statements)
• Plan a comparison table of prior theoretical bounds vs. this paper's bounds
• Identify which proofs go in appendix vs. main body

Method paper:

1. Introduction (1.5 pages)
2. Related Work (1 page)
3. Method (2 pages)
4. Experiments (2.5 pages)
5. Ablation / Analysis (1 page)
6. Conclusion (0.5 pages)

Step 3: Section-by-Section Planning

For each section, specify:

### §0 Abstract
- **What we achieve**: [the paper's specific contribution, not field-level background]
- **Why it matters / is hard**: [why this problem is important and non-trivial]
- **How we do it**: [approach in one sentence]
- **Evidence**: [what supports the claim]
- **Most remarkable result**: [strongest quantitative or theoretical result]
- **Estimated length**: 150-250 words
- **Self-contained check**: can a reader understand this without the paper?

### §1 Introduction
- **Opening hook**: [1-2 sentences that motivate the problem]
- **Gap / challenge**: [what's missing in prior work, and why prior work is insufficient]
- **One-sentence contribution**: [the main takeaway of the paper]
- **Approach overview**: [what we do differently]
- **Key questions**: [the research questions this paper answers]
- **Contributions**: [2-4 numbered bullets, specific and falsifiable, matching Claims-Evidence Matrix]
- **Results preview**: [the st