SciWrite — Manuscript Writing Review

An Agent Skill that reviews scientific and engineering manuscripts for writing quality, applying the methodology from Dr. Kristin Sainani's Writing in the Sciences course at Stanford.

What this skill does

Clear writing is not a cosmetic concern in science; it determines whether reviewers and readers can follow your argument. Yet most graduate students receive little formal training in scientific writing, and self-editing for clarity is difficult because you already know what you meant to say.

This skill encodes a systematic editorial review distilled from 30 video lectures on scientific writing, extended with Nature's guidance on structuring a summary paragraph. It works on anything from a whole manuscript to a single sentence, in six audit passes:

1. Clutter. Dead-weight phrases, empty openers ("There are several studies that…"), redundancies, and negative constructions, with concise replacements.
2. Voice and verbs. Passive constructions that hide who did what, and smothered verbs ("performed an analysis of" → "analyzed").
3. Sentence and paragraph architecture. Buried verbs, overloaded sentences, dangling modifiers, paragraphs without a clear main idea or topic sentence, and transitions that don't fit the logic. In full reviews, it also checks what each section must do: an Introduction that states the gap, Results that lead with findings, a Discussion that opens with the answer and states limitations.
4. Terminology. Key terms, group names and acronyms used consistently, so the reader never wonders whether "heavier participants" are the "obese group".
5. Numbers and citations. Values that disagree between text and tables, and statistics cited only to a review.
6. Summary paragraph structure. An abstract checked against the sequence of moves Nature prescribes, from field context to "Here we show" to broader significance, with sentence budgets and word count.

You can ask for a full review, a single section, a single pass ("check for passive voice"), an abstract review, or an interactive walk-through, paragraph by paragraph. Reports group repeated problems, tag each finding CRITICAL, MAJOR or MINOR, give its location, and show a concrete revision.

The skill does not alter scientific content, data, or claims, and it never makes a claim stronger or weaker on its own. It improves how your claims are delivered. It is not a substitute for technical peer review.

Install

A skill is a folder (skills/sciwrite/) holding SKILL.md and two reference files the skill reads when it needs them. Most tools install the whole folder from the release ZIP or from this repository.

Where you use AI	How to install
Claude (web, desktop, Cowork)	Upload the release ZIP under Customize → Skills
Claude Code	/plugin install sciwrite --marketplace labarba/sciwrite
ChatGPT	Upload the release ZIP under Skills (workspace plans)
Gemini app	Upload the release ZIP under Customize → Skills
Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI and other coding agents	gh skill install labarba/sciwrite sciwrite or npx skills add labarba/sciwrite
Any other tool	Paste the three skill files into its custom instructions

The release ZIP is sciwrite-<version>.zip, attached to the latest release. It holds the sciwrite/ folder and nothing else. Don't use GitHub's green Code → Download ZIP button: that archive contains the whole repository. If Safari unzips the download into a folder, compress the sciwrite folder again (right-click → Compress) before uploading.

Steps and menus below were checked in October 2026. These products change often; if a menu has moved, the links to each vendor's help page have the current steps.

Upgrading from version 0.1? The skill was renamed from manuscript-writing-review to sciwrite. Remove the old skill first, so the two don't compete.

Claude (claude.ai, Claude desktop, Cowork)

1. Make sure code execution is on: Settings → Capabilities → Code execution and file creation. On Enterprise plans, an owner must also enable skills for the organization.
2. Go to Customize → Skills, click +, then Create skill → Upload a skill, and upload the release ZIP.
3. Check that the skill's toggle is on.

The skill is then available in every chat and in Cowork, and it syncs to Claude Code when you're signed in with the same account. Skills are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans. See Use skills in Claude.

Claude Code

This repository is a Claude Code plugin marketplace. In a session, run:

/plugin install sciwrite --marketplace labarba/sciwrite

From your shell, the same works as claude plugin install sciwrite --marketplace labarba/sciwrite. These one-step commands need Claude Code 2.1.275 or later in a session, 2.1.292 or later in the shell; on older versions, run /plugin marketplace add labarba/sciwrite and then /plugin install sciwrite@sciwrite. Third-party marketplaces don't auto-update by default: to get a new version, run /plugin marketplace update sciwrite, or turn on auto-update for it in the Marketplaces tab of /plugin.

To install without the plugin system, copy the folder into your personal or project skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/labarba/sciwrite.git
cp -r sciwrite/skills/sciwrite ~/.claude/skills/

ChatGPT

1. Open the Skills page (in recent versions it sits under Plugins), click Create, then Upload from your computer, and select the release ZIP.
2. ChatGPT scans uploaded skills before they become available.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗