---
name: manuscript-writing
description: Draft and restructure research manuscripts, abstracts, proposals, and grant narratives from traceable evidence while preserving contribution and uncertainty.
---

# Manuscript writing

Use this method when a researcher needs a manuscript section, complete paper draft, abstract, proposal, or grant narrative. Begin with the [research contract](../../docs/RESEARCH-CONTRACT.md). Writing cannot supply missing experiments, derive authority from fluent prose, or turn an intended analysis into a completed result.

## Establish the writing assignment

Collect the audience, research question, document type, venue requirements, word or page limit, available evidence, and requested deliverable. Identify whether the document reports completed work or requests support for future work. Separate the author's own results from background knowledge, collaborators' contributions, unpublished observations, and material needing permission. When instructions are incomplete, choose a reversible structure and mark consequential assumptions.

Build a compact evidence ledger before drafting: claim; supporting result or source; provenance; uncertainty; and allowed wording. Classify each proposed statement as observation, analysis, interpretation, limitation, or plan. A result without accessible supporting material may be described as supplied by the author, but must not acquire invented statistical details or independent verification.

## Choose and build the argument

Write a one-sentence research question and a one-sentence answer supported by the available results. Use these to select sections and remove distracting background. For an empirical paper, organize methods so another researcher could understand sampling, measures, exclusions, procedures, and analysis. Present outcomes with denominators, units, uncertainty, and prespecified versus exploratory distinctions where available. For qualitative work, describe recruitment, context, analytic process, reflexivity, and how interpretations relate to excerpts. Avoid pretending that participant quotations establish population prevalence.

For theory, state assumptions and definitions before propositions, distinguish proof from heuristic argument, and give the regime where the result applies. For computational work, expose model inputs, algorithms, precision, stopping rules, validation comparisons, and software or data provenance. Route unresolved derivations through [scientific reasoning](../scientific-reasoning/SKILL.md) or [research validation](../research-validation/SKILL.md) instead of hiding gaps in prose.

Draft the results or central argument first, then write only the methods needed to explain it. Develop the discussion as a sequence of supported interpretation, comparison with relevant work, limitations, and consequences. An introduction should establish the problem and bounded gap, explain the approach, and state the contribution without priority claims unsupported by a literature search. An abstract must match the body: question, approach, principal findings, and qualified implication. Do not add a numerical finding merely to make it seem informative.

## Adapt the document branch

For proposals and grants, distinguish preliminary evidence from proposed aims. Give each aim a question, approach, feasibility basis, measurable outcome, likely failure mode, and alternative. Explain resources and dependencies without inventing budget figures, institutional commitments, or collaborator agreement. Adapt significance to the actual audience rather than inflating practical impact.

For a word limit, allocate space by the reader's decisions. Remove repeated motivation, tangential examples, and redundant interpretation before removing essential assumptions or qualifications. For multilingual drafting, preserve technical meanings and notation; ask for clarification when terminology has materially different interpretations. Use [academic editing](../academic-editing/SKILL.md) for a separate language pass.

## Deliver and verify

Deliver the requested editable text, a concise list of unresolved evidence needs, and references only to sources actually supplied or checked. Keep placeholders unmistakable and out of apparently final reference lists. If producing a typeset artifact, use [document production](../document-production/SKILL.md) and report its actual build state.

Compare every abstract and conclusion claim against the evidence ledger. Verify numbers against their source, citations against the statements they support, and authorship or contribution descriptions against supplied facts. Check cross-section consistency in terminology, sample counts, symbols, outcomes, and tense. State which sources and results were inspected and which remain author-supplied. Completion means a coherent, evidence-aligned draft; submission readiness requires the venue, ethics, permissions, and artifact checks applicable to that submission.