scientific-revision - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: scientific-revision plugin: writing description: Use this skill whenever the user wants to verify, revise, or improve a scientific essay, academic paper, or any written document. It checks citation consistency, verifies bibliography entries via CrossRef and Google Scholar/Semantic Scholar, and detects AI-generated writing patterns (slop). Trigger this skill whenever the user mentions 'check citations', 'verify references', 'scientific revision', 'revise essay', 'clean up writing', 'check for AI slop', 'improve writing quality', 'check google scholar', or 'review my paper', especially in academic or professional writing contexts.

Scientific Revision Skill

This skill provides four tools for document review:

Citation Checker — cross-checks in-text citations against the bibliography
CrossRef Verifier — checks whether bibliography entries are real publications
Scholar Verifier — checks entries against Google Scholar (via scholarly) with Semantic Scholar as fallback
Writing Quality Checker — detects AI slop patterns, vague language, and terminology inconsistencies

Works with any document that has a bibliography/references section. Supports APA, MLA, Chicago, and language-native citation styles in English, German, French, and Italian — parenthetical and narrative styles.

Scripts

All scripts live in .agents/skills/scientific-revision/scripts/. Pass the document path as the first argument; all scripts default to docs/essay/essay.md if omitted.

1. Citation Checker

python .agents/skills/scientific-revision/scripts/check_citations.py [path/to/document.md]

Finds citations in text missing from bibliography — and suggests alternatives from the bibliography that might be the intended reference.
Finds bibliography entries never cited in the text.

2. Bibliography Verification (CrossRef)

python .agents/skills/scientific-revision/scripts/verify_crossref.py [path/to/document.md]

Queries the CrossRef API to verify each bibliography entry is a real publication.
Generates a citation_report.md in the same directory as the input file.
Books and software get medium confidence by default (not indexed in CrossRef).

3. Bibliography Verification (Google Scholar / Semantic Scholar)

python .agents/skills/scientific-revision/scripts/verify_scholar.py [path/to/document.md]

Uses the Semantic Scholar API via httpx (no library dependency issues).
Optionally cross-checks with Google Scholar via scholarly (install with uv add scholarly).
Also reports citation counts, useful to gauge publication impact.
Generates a citation_report_scholar.md in the same directory as the input file.
Complement CrossRef: use both to catch entries that appear in one index but not the other.
Set SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY env var for a free key that raises the rate limit.

4. Writing Quality Checker

python .agents/skills/scientific-revision/scripts/check_writing.py [path/to/document.md]

Flags AI slop phrases (e.g., "delve into", "it is worth noting", "seamlessly", "leverage").
Detects terminology inconsistencies (e.g., mixing "dataset" and "data set").
Flags repetitive sentence/paragraph starters.
Reports line numbers so issues are easy to locate.

Supported Section Headers

The scripts auto-detect bibliography sections with any of these headings: References, Bibliography, Works Cited (EN) · Literaturverzeichnis, Literatur (DE) · Bibliographie, Références (FR) · Bibliografia, Riferimenti bibliografici, Opere citate (IT)

Workflow

When the user asks you to revise or verify their document, follow this sequence unless instructed otherwise:

Check Citations: Run check_citations.py. For each missing citation, review the suggested alternatives and ask the user if one of them is the intended reference. Report uncited bibliography entries too.
Verify References (CrossRef): Run verify_crossref.py. Share the generated citation_report.md with the user, highlighting any low-confidence entries that may be hallucinated or incorrect.
Verify References (Scholar): Run verify_scholar.py. Cross-reference the citation_report_scholar.md with the CrossRef results.
- An entry flagged low by CrossRef but verified by Scholar (or vice-versa) warrants closer manual review.
- Highlight citation counts for entries with zero citations — these may be obscure or fabricated.
Check Writing Quality: Run check_writing.py. For each flagged phrase or inconsistency, propose a concrete rewrite. Don't just list problems — offer the user improved versions of the flagged sentences.

After all four checks, give the user a concise summary of:

Citation issues found and resolved
Bibliography entries that could not be verified by either CrossRef or Scholar
Any discrepancies between CrossRef and Scholar results
Writing quality issues and suggested improvements