academic-writing-agents

Academic Writing Agents

A Claude Code plugin that brings multi-agent review to academic writing — the same "multiple expert reviewers" model that makes peer review work, built into your writing process.

Why

The gap between doing great research and writing about it clearly costs real impact. Findings get buried in unclear prose, reviewers stumble over notation inconsistencies, and figures fail to carry their weight. Most researchers get feedback from one or two people, often late in the process.

This plugin gives you a team of 12 specialist agents — each focused on a different dimension of writing quality — working in parallel, available at any point in the writing process.

Design Philosophy

Informed by Michael Black's "Writing a Good Scientific Paper" and real thesis/paper writing experience:

• Parallel expert review. Multiple specialized agents review simultaneously, each catching what others miss — like having a writing coach, a technical reviewer, a figure specialist, and a bibliography checker all reading at once.
• Review-then-act. Always diagnose before fixing. The writing-reviewer identifies issues; the prose-polisher implements fixes. Never blindly edit.
• 30 codified principles. Not ad-hoc corrections but a systematic framework organized into 6 categories: Structure & Narrative, Prose & Style, Math & Equations, Figures & Tables, Citations & Bibliography, and Process & Meta.
• Human-in-the-loop. Agents propose; humans decide. The plugin presents a prioritized plan and the author chooses what to act on.
• Goal-Problem-Solution rhythm. From Black's guide — every section should follow the GPS pattern. The plugin itself is structured this way: identify what you want to improve (goal), diagnose what's wrong (problem), deploy the right agents to fix it (solution).

How It Works

1. Auto-triggers when Claude detects academic writing context (.tex files, thesis chapters, paper drafts).
2. The academic skill reads project conventions from your .claude/CLAUDE.md.
3. Deploys the right specialist agents in parallel.
4. Synthesizes findings into a prioritized report (Critical / Important / Minor).
5. Offers to fix issues via action agents or direct edits.
6. Iterates with you until you're satisfied.

You can also invoke it manually: /academic review my introduction.

What's Included

Skill

Skill	Command	Description
Academic	/academic <task>	Orchestrates specialist agents for academic writing tasks

Agents (12 total)

Review Agents (read-only analysis):

Agent	Focus
consistency-checker	Terminology, cross-refs, figure-text-caption alignment, structural coherence
logic-reviewer	Argument flow, transitions, narrative arc, logical gaps
technical-reviewer	Math notation, methodology, results validity, citations
writing-reviewer	Prose clarity, conciseness, grammar, academic tone
latex-layout-auditor	PDF layout audit — float placement, alignment, sizing

Audit Agents (read + verify):

Agent	Focus
bibliography-auditor	Bib entry completeness, arXiv updates, title capitalization, venue consistency

Research Agents (read + web):

Agent	Focus
research-analyst	Related work, novelty assessment, positioning, gap analysis
brainstormer	Alternative framings, cross-disciplinary connections, research directions

Survey Agents (read + web + write):

Agent	Focus
paper-crawler	Collects papers from DBLP + OpenAlex APIs, deduplicates, classifies

Action Agents (read + write):

Agent	Focus
prose-polisher	Rewrites text for clarity, conciseness, flow (edits, not just reports)
section-drafter	Drafts LaTeX sections, paragraphs, transitions, captions, abstracts
latex-figure-specialist	Creates/adjusts TikZ/pgfplots figures, manages placement and layout

30 Principles

Organized into 6 categories:

A. Structure & Narrative — A1 Recursive Consistency, A2 Logical Chaining, A3 Definition Order, A4 Paragraph Closers, A5 Claim-First, A6 GPS Rhythm, A7 The Nugget

B. Prose & Style — B1 Enumerations, B2 Negation-Contrast, B3 Colloquial Terms, B4 Thesis Voice, B5 One Idea/Sentence, B6 Calibrated Confidence, B7 Ruthless Conciseness, B8 AI-Tell Detection

C. Math & Equations — C1 Math for Clarity, C2 Triple Explanation, C3 Equation-Code Correspondence

D. Figures & Tables — D1 Active Figures, D2 Cross-Reference Floats, D3 Figure-Text-Caption Consistency, D4 One Message, D5 Interpret Figures, D6 Row Alignment, D7 Caption Self-Sufficiency

E. Citations & Bibliography — E1 Cite Named Entities, E2 Citation Completeness, E3 Bibliography Hygiene

F. Process & Meta — F1 Strategic Limitations, F2 Negation-Contrast Audit

Usage