From artbull-skills
Organizes an Art Bulletin article so the argument unfolds clearly and figures integrate at the right moments within the ~16,000-word limit. Shapes structure for long-form art-historical writing.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/artbull-skills:artbull-structure-and-expositionThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
A long art-historical article (up to **16,000 words including endnotes**) succeeds or fails on
A long art-historical article (up to 16,000 words including endnotes) succeeds or fails on
architecture: the order in which the thesis, the looking, and the evidence reach the reader, and
where each figure appears. This skill organizes the piece; the sentence-level craft and citation live
in artbull-writing-style-and-citation.
A submission to the College Art Association's quarterly is a long-form essay whose figures are woven into the argument.
| Structural unit | Working well | Failing | Repair |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening | Work, question, stakes, and thesis land in the first pages | Slow descriptive tour before any claim | Lead with the problem and the contestable thesis |
| Figure placement | Each figure introduced exactly where discussed | Figures referenced far from their discussion, or never | Move the reference beside the prose that depends on it |
| Endnotes | Substantive apparatus, disciplined length | Argument offloaded into notes that balloon over cap | Keep the argument in the text; trim the apparatus |
Suppose a draft on a sculpted tomb opens with eight pages describing every figure before the reader learns why it matters, and the central comparison securing the workshop attribution appears only in an endnote. The spine is rebuilt: the opening names the tomb, the question, the stakes, and the thesis within the first pages. The description is redistributed to where it carries the argument; the buried comparison is promoted into the text as a numbered figure beside the attribution discussion, and a digressive excursus on a restoration moves to a compact endnote, so the recast article fits the cap and closes on stakes.
【Spine】problem → thesis → looking → evidence → interpretation → stakes
【Figure placement】each figure introduced where discussed? [Y/N]
【Length】est. words incl. endnotes vs ~16,000 cap
【Notes discipline】apparatus in notes, argument in text? [Y/N]
【Cuts】what moves out / is dropped to fit
【Next】artbull-writing-style-and-citation
../../resources/external_tools.md — manuscript and reference tooling../../resources/official-source-map.md — article length (incl. endnotes) and figure conventionsnpx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin artbull-skillsOrganizes American Historical Review articles by interleaving narrative and analysis within ~8,000 words. Helps structure drafts that wander or separate story from argument.
Builds the central art-historical argument of an Art Bulletin article: thesis, stakes, and chain from evidence to interpretation. Use when crystallizing a claim or linking visual analysis to documentary sources.
Organizes a Mind article's argument into a clear, logical structure within ~8,000 words. Focuses on thesis placement, premise ordering, objection positioning, and conclusion discipline.