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scientific-writing-story

scientific-writing-story

github.com/d-laubDocuments036 installsUpdated 2w ago
Repository

About scientific-writing-story

Scientific Writing — Stage 1: Find the Story is a research-writing skill for mapping experiments and agreeing on a paper’s central thesis and narrative before drafting. It requires evidence-backed decisions about which research threads belong in the story and which are dropped.

Key features

  1. 01Inventory experiments and results
  2. 02Identify candidate and dropped threads
  3. 03Confirm thesis with the user
  4. 04Shape a two-part narrative arc
  5. 05Write a story.md outline

Use cases

  1. 01Organize a repository before drafting a paper
  2. 02Select experiments that support the thesis
  3. 03Record abandoned research threads explicitly

Install

Copy the command and run it in a terminal.

$npx skills add https://github.com/d-laub/dlaub-togo --skill scientific-writing-story

After installing, type/scientific-writing-storyin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.

Details

From the project README

Scientific Writing — Stage 1: Find the Story

Overview

A research repo accumulates parallel and abandoned experiments. Before any outline or prose, establish ONE linear story: the thesis, the experiments that support it, and an explicit record of what was dropped. Output: docs/writing/<story-slug>/story.md in the consuming repo.

Do not write the story from your own assumptions. Map the repo, then converge with the user.

Method backbone — Steps 1–2

This stage is Steps 1–2 of the fifteen steps (detail: scientific-writing/fifteen-steps.md):

  • Step 1 — main point. The thesis is one short declarative sentence (subject + verb) that scopes the phenomenon and gives focus. Every later paragraph must illuminate it. It need not become the final title.
  • Step 2 — narrative arc. The arc answers what did we want to learn, why, what did we do, what do we know now, and follows the key transitions (question→answer, theory→evidence, data→interpretation). Prefer a two-part structure — the most memorable and publishable shape. Confirm which two-part scheme fits when you converge with the user (e.g. experiment 1 + experiment 2; simple model + complicated model; experiment + model to explain it; model + experiment to test it; observed pattern + model to explain it).

Process

  1. Map the research cloud. Dispatch Explore subagents (read-only) to inventory: experiments/scripts, results/, figures/, notebooks, git log, and CLAUDE.md. Use superpowers:dispatching-parallel-agents if there are independent areas. Goal: a list of every experiment/result thread, each tagged candidate-main vs possibly-dropped.
  2. Converge with the user, ONE question at a time. Confirm: the working title, the single thesis, which threads are IN, which are DROPPED. Prefer multiple-choice. Do not proceed to writing until the user confirms the thesis and the in/out split.
  3. Write story.md (template below).

story.md template

# <Working title>
slug: <kebab-case-slug>

## Thesis
<one or two sentences — the single claim the paper makes>

## Narrative arc (linear)
Two-part scheme: <which Step-2 scheme, e.g. "experiment + model to explain it">
1. <beat> 2. <beat> 3. <beat> …  (the logical order the paper will argue in)

## Beat → artifacts
| Beat | Supporting artifacts (scripts / results / plots / notebooks) |
|------|------|
| <beat> | `path/to/script.py`, `results/x.csv`, `figures/y.svg` |

## Dropped / out of scope
- <thread> — why dropped (user-confirmed)

Red flags — STOP

  • Writing story.md before mapping the repo → map first.
  • Asserting a thesis the user hasn't confirmed → ask.
  • A beat with no backing artifact → either find it or it's not a beat.
  • An abandoned experiment silently included → it goes in Dropped.

Next stage

Once the user approves story.md, invoke scientific-writing-outline.

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