paper-argument-planner

Paper Argument Planner

A paper is not a list of experiments. It is an argument that a reader can follow, object to, and eventually believe. This skill helps turn research material into that argument before drafting prose.

Use this when

• The user has an idea, result set, outline, abstract, or rough draft and asks how to make it into a paper.
• The contribution is unclear or too broad.
• Experiments exist but the story does not.
• The user needs to decide what each section should prove.
• The paper has too many claims, disconnected tables, or weak motivation.

Do not use this for

• Polishing finished prose sentence by sentence. Use a writing/editing skill instead.
• Writing a source-grounded literature survey. Use literature-triangulation or related-work-writer.
• Checking whether results are reproducible. Use reproducibility-audit.
• Strategic rebuttal to reviewers. Use reviewer-response-strategist.

Workflow

1. Extract the raw material

Identify, without embellishing:

• Problem: what is hard, missing, or misunderstood?
• Proposed idea or method: what did the authors do?
• Evidence: what results, proofs, ablations, or analyses exist?
• Audience: which community must be convinced?
• Constraint: venue, page limit, deadline, available experiments.

If these are missing, ask targeted questions instead of inventing them.

2. State the argument spine

Write the paper's argument in this form:

Because [problem/gap], we need [capability or understanding].
Existing work fails because [specific limitation].
This paper contributes [method/claim/analysis].
The key evidence is [main result + supporting result + stress test].
Therefore readers should believe [bounded conclusion].

The spine should be narrow enough that one paper can actually support it.

3. Separate claims by strength

Classify each claim:

• Main claim — the paper lives or dies on this.
• Supporting claim — needed to make the main claim believable.
• Mechanism claim — explains why the method works.
• Scope claim — where it works and where it does not.
• Speculative claim — interesting but not established; move to discussion or remove.

For each claim, require evidence. If evidence is missing, mark it explicitly.

4. Build the section logic

Create a section plan where every section has a job:

• Abstract — compressed problem, contribution, evidence, implication.
• Introduction — why the problem matters, what gap exists, what this paper proves.
• Related Work — how prior work creates the gap or contrast.
• Method / Theory — what is new enough to understand the contribution.
• Experiments / Results — evidence for each claim, in order of importance.
• Analysis / Ablations — why the result happens and what alternatives fail.
• Limitations — bounded honesty, not self-sabotage.
• Conclusion — what changed after reading the paper.

Do not include a section just because papers usually have one. Include it because it performs a necessary role in the argument.

5. Plan figures and tables as evidence

For each proposed figure or table, specify:

• claim it supports
• expected reader takeaway
• required comparison or control
• whether it belongs in main paper or appendix

Decorative figures are liabilities. If a figure does not support a claim, cut it or move it to appendix.

6. Stress-test reader objections

List the strongest likely objections:

• novelty objection
• baseline fairness objection
• generality/scope objection
• mechanism objection
• missing ablation objection
• reproducibility objection

For each, say whether the current paper answers it with evidence, prose, or neither.

Output format

Use this structure:

# Paper Argument Plan

## One-sentence thesis

## Argument spine

## Claim hierarchy
| Claim | Type | Evidence | Status |
|---|---|---|---|

## Section plan

## Figure/table plan
| Artifact | Claim supported | Takeaway | Main/appendix |
|---|---|---|---|

## Weak spots

## Next actions

Quality bar

A good plan should make the paper easier to reject or accept. If the argument is vague enough that no experiment could falsify it, sharpen it before writing prose.