Agent skill

Hlr Argument Structure

by brycewang-stanford in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

A skill your agent uses when organizing the body of a Harvard Law Review (HLR) piece along the doctrine to theory to normative-prescription arc that legal scholarship rewards.

MITAuto-check passedEducation

Install Hlr Argument Structure

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-argument-structure -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills hlr-argument-structure --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-argument-structure .claude/skills/hlr-argument-structure && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
hlr-argument-structure
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.2k tokens
SKILL.md length
567 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when organizing the body of a Harvard Law Review (HLR) piece along the doctrine to theory to normative-prescription arc that legal scholarship rewards.

  • Works in 5 steps: Each Part earns the next. The… → State the law fairly before you attack… → Make the theory do work. A normative… → …
  • Tasks that involve Essays and academic help
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, The doctrine → theory →…, Construction rules and Engaging the literature inside…, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Hlr Argument Structure is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when organizing the body of a Harvard Law Review (HLR) piece along the doctrine to theory to normative-prescription arc that legal scholarship rewards. Structures the argument and its internal logic; it does not forge the thesis (hlr-thesis-and-contribution) or format the citations (hlr-sources-and-bluebook).

Its SKILL.md is about 1.2k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Education, covering Essays and academic help and Citation management. The repository describes itself as: Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. | 覆盖主流期刊的… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Essays and academic help
  • Tasks that involve Citation management

Example prompts

  • “/hlr-argument-structure”

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Each Part earns the next. The prescription must follow from the diagnosis, which must follow from
  2. State the law fairly before you attack it. Student editors and generalist readers distrust pieces
  3. Make the theory do work. A normative principle is not décor — it must generate the prescription and
  4. Pressure-test on the hard case. Apply your prescription to the fact pattern that most threatens it;
  5. Adjudicate the single strongest objection, not a row of weak ones. Name it, take it seriously, and

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 932eb23. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Hlr Argument Structure loads about 1.2k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 84 tokens; SKILL.md has 567 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~84
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.2k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills at commit 932eb23, republished under its MIT licence (© brycewang-stanford). 567 words, ~1,186 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/hlr-argument-structure/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
hlr-argument-structure
description
Use when organizing the body of a Harvard Law Review (HLR) piece along the doctrine to theory to normative-prescription arc that legal scholarship rewards. Structures the argument and its internal logic; it does not forge the thesis (hlr-thesis-and-contribution) or format the citations (hlr-sources-and-bluebook).

Argument Structure (hlr-argument-structure)

A flagship legal article does three things in order: maps the doctrine, diagnoses the problem with a theory or principle, and prescribes what should change. This doctrine → theory → prescription arc is the spine readers and student editors expect. This skill organizes the body so each Part does one job and the prescription is earned by what precedes it.

When to trigger

  • The thesis is set but the body sprawls or repeats itself
  • Readers lose the thread between the doctrinal Part and the argument
  • The prescription appears without the diagnosis that should justify it
  • You need to decide Part order and what each Part is responsible for

The doctrine → theory → prescription arc

PartJobFailure mode if skipped
I. Doctrine / landscapeLay out the law as it is, precisely and fairly, including the split or tensionA strawman the rest of the piece knocks down
II. Diagnosis / theoryExplain why the doctrine fails — the principle, value, or logic it betraysAn assertion that the law is "wrong" with no theory
III. PrescriptionArgue for the fix and show it works on the hard casesA reform proposal floating free of the diagnosis
IV. Objections / scopeAdjudicate the strongest counterargument and bound the claimA reviewer's obvious objection left unanswered

Construction rules

  1. Each Part earns the next. The prescription must follow from the diagnosis, which must follow from the doctrinal map. If you could move a Part without loss, the logic is loose.
  2. State the law fairly before you attack it. Student editors and generalist readers distrust pieces that caricature current doctrine. The strongest version of the status quo makes your critique credible.
  3. Make the theory do work. A normative principle is not décor — it must generate the prescription and resolve the hard cases the doctrine cannot.
  4. Pressure-test on the hard case. Apply your prescription to the fact pattern that most threatens it; if it survives, the piece is strong; if it doesn't, narrow the claim (loop hlr-thesis-and-contribution).
  5. Adjudicate the single strongest objection, not a row of weak ones. Name it, take it seriously, and show why the thesis holds (or where it must be qualified).
Show full SKILL.md (205 more words)Show less

Engaging the literature inside the argument

Engage prior scholarship where it bears on the move, not in a front-loaded lit-review dump. When you diagnose, cite the works that framed the problem; when you prescribe, distinguish the nearest rival proposals (the neighbors found in hlr-preemption-check). Footnotes carry most of this engagement.

Checklist

  • Body follows doctrine → theory → prescription, each Part with one job
  • The status quo is stated in its strongest form before critique
  • The theory generates the prescription (not bolted on)
  • The prescription is tested on the hardest case
  • The single strongest objection is named and adjudicated
  • Scope conditions stated — where the claim does and does not reach
  • Literature engaged at the point of the move, mostly via footnotes

Anti-patterns

  • A descriptive Part I that never becomes an argument (the "survey then opine" structure)
  • Prescription with no diagnosis — "courts should do X" without showing why the current rule fails
  • Strawmanning the doctrine so the critique lands on a position no one holds
  • A wall of weak objections instead of the one that actually threatens the thesis
  • Front-loaded literature review disconnected from the argument's moves

Output format

【Arc】Part I doctrine → Part II theory/diagnosis → Part III prescription → Part IV objections/scope
【Each Part's job】one line each
【Hardest case】the fact pattern that tests the prescription
【Strongest objection】and how it is adjudicated
【Scope】where the claim reaches and where it stops
【Next】hlr-sources-and-bluebook → hlr-footnotes-and-cite-check

Supplementary resources

© brycewang-stanford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-argument-structure of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Hlr Argument Structure next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Hlr Argument Structure compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Hlr Argument Structure this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
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Thesis Workflowinfometa/workbuddyskills346—~922Automated safety check: PassNone
Thesis CreatorStars-OC/thesis-creator230—~2.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Publish Research Siteagentara/skills602—~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Synthesizeagentii-ai/agentii-investment-intelligence207—~3.2kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Questions about Hlr Argument Structure

What does Hlr Argument Structure do?

A skill your agent uses when organizing the body of a Harvard Law Review (HLR) piece along the doctrine to theory to normative-prescription arc that legal scholarship rewards. Hlr Argument Structure is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when organizing the body of a Harvard Law Review (HLR) piece along the doctrine to theory to normative-prescription arc that legal scholarship rewards.

When should I use Hlr Argument Structure?

Hlr Argument Structure fits situations like: tasks that involve Essays and academic help; tasks that involve Citation management.

How do I install Hlr Argument Structure in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-argument-structure -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-argument-structure in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/hlr-argument-structure in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Hlr Argument Structure in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-argument-structure -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (Harvard-Law-Review-Skills/skills/hlr-argument-structure in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/hlr-argument-structure in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Hlr Argument Structure in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill hlr-argument-structure -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/hlr-argument-structure, .gemini/skills/hlr-argument-structure, .github/skills/hlr-argument-structure and .opencode/skills/hlr-argument-structure in your project.

What does Hlr Argument Structure need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Hlr Argument Structure is instructions for the agent only.

Does Hlr Argument Structure access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Hlr Argument Structure safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Hlr Argument Structure use?

Hlr Argument Structure is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Hlr Argument Structure use?

About 1.2k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 4.7k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Hlr Argument Structure?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Hlr Argument Structure: Thesis Citation Enhance Review (WILLOSCAR/research-units-pipeline-skills, 513 stars), Thesis Workflow (infometa/workbuddyskills, 346 stars), Thesis Creator (Stars-OC/thesis-creator, 230 stars) and Publish Research Site (agentara/skills, 602 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Hlr Argument Structure?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,228 GitHub stars. The repository holds 2,387 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 27, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.