From ci-skills
Evaluates whether a project fits Critical Inquiry's interdisciplinary standards and helps choose the right format (Article, Critical Response, or Review).
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/ci-skills:ci-topic-selectionThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
*Critical Inquiry* is the discipline-crossing flagship of **criticism and theory** in the arts and
Critical Inquiry is the discipline-crossing flagship of criticism and theory in the arts and humanities. The bar is not "a smart reading no one has done" — it is "a theoretical intervention that reorients a conversation across fields." Use this skill to pressure-test fit before you invest.
A strong CI essay usually clears all four:
ci-theory-and-method).| Home field | Reach across the disciplines by… |
|---|---|
| Literary study | make the stakes conceptual, not only textual — what does the reading do to a theory? |
| Art / visual culture | draw the argument about images, seeing, or mediation that a non-art-historian needs |
| Film / media | tie the case to general questions of form, technology, temporality, or attention |
| Philosophy / aesthetics | ground the concept in objects or cases, not only in the literature of the concept |
| Politics / history | show the conceptual or critical stakes, not just the empirical record |
ci-argument-and-intervention).【Project】one sentence
【Intervention】what it changes for readers (not "what it reads")
【Interdisciplinary stakes】who outside the home field cares, and why
【Theory at work】the concept and the object it acts on
【Format】Article / Critical Response / Review
【Fit verdict】strong / needs reframing / off-fit (why)
【Next】ci-scholarly-positioning
../../resources/external_tools.md — primary objects, theory shelf, archives and image sources../../resources/official-source-map.md — CI scope, formats, and word capsnpx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin ci-skillsEvaluates manuscript fit for Critical Inquiry, covering conceptual-stakes bar, cross-disciplinary expectations, style norms, and desk-reject heuristics.
Routes Critical Inquiry essays to the right sub-skill based on lifecycle stage and format (Article, Critical Response, Review). Dispatches across topic selection, argument, evidence, theory, structure, writing, citation, review, submission, and revision.
Tests whether a communication research project fits the Journal of Communication (JoC) and helps choose between original article and JoC Forum formats.