A skill your agent uses when writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight, significance-forward pitch, not a summary, that lets the editor decide within two minutes whether…

MITAuto-check passedBusiness, Finance & HR

Install Sci Cover Letter

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill sci-cover-letter -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills sci-cover-letter --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/Science-Skills/skills/sci-cover-letter .claude/skills/sci-cover-letter && 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
sci-cover-letter
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.5k tokens
SKILL.md length
728 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight, significance-forward pitch, not a summary, that lets the editor decide within two minutes whether…

  • Works in 5 steps: Opening claim (2–3 sentences). The… → Why Science specifically (2–3… → What's new vs. prior work (2–3… → …
  • Writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, What the cover letter is for, Structure (≈ 250–400 words,… and The significance paragraph test, plus 7 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Sci Cover Letter is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight, significance-forward pitch, not a summary, that lets the editor decide within two minutes whether the paper clears the broad-interest bar and should go out for external review.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.5k 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 Business, Finance & HR, covering Resume and CV writing. 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

  • Writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight
  • Significance-forward pitch
  • That lets the editor decide within two minutes whether the paper clears the broad-interest bar and should go out for external review

Example prompts

  • “/sci-cover-letter”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Opening claim (2–3 sentences). The one-sentence advance (sci-framing) plus why it matters to a broad audience. Lead with the result, not…
  2. Why Science specifically (2–3 sentences). Why this is general-interest, not specialist — what communities beyond your own will care and…
  3. What's new vs. prior work (2–3 sentences). The decisive distinction from the closest prior papers, including any concurrent work. Pre-empt…
  4. Format & logistics (short). "We submit this as a Report/Research Article. The work has not been published and is not under consideration…
  5. Optional: suggested/excluded reviewers, competing interests, related submissions, and any embargo/press considerations.

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

Sci Cover Letter loads about 1.5k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 68 tokens; SKILL.md has 728 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~68
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.5k

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). 728 words, ~1,506 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/sci-cover-letter/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
sci-cover-letter
description
Use when writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight, significance-forward pitch, not a summary, that lets the editor decide within two minutes whether the paper clears the broad-interest bar and should go out for external review.

Cover Letter & Editor Pitch (sci-cover-letter)

When to trigger

  • Ready to submit and need the editor-facing letter.
  • The current letter is a formality ("please find enclosed…") with no argument.
  • You need to argue broad significance explicitly to survive triage.

What the cover letter is for

Science editors triage fast. The letter must let an editor decide, in under two minutes, that the paper is plausibly broad enough to review. It is a significance argument, not a summary.

Structure (≈ 250–400 words, one page)

  1. Opening claim (2–3 sentences). The one-sentence advance (sci-framing) plus why it matters to a broad audience. Lead with the result, not the background.
  2. Why Science specifically (2–3 sentences). Why this is general-interest, not specialist — what communities beyond your own will care and why now (sci-framing why-now trigger).
  3. What's new vs. prior work (2–3 sentences). The decisive distinction from the closest prior papers, including any concurrent work. Pre-empt "isn't this known?".
  4. Format & logistics (short). "We submit this as a Report/Research Article. The work has not been published and is not under consideration elsewhere."
  5. Optional: suggested/excluded reviewers, competing interests, related submissions, and any embargo/press considerations.

The significance paragraph test

The editor should be able to copy your second paragraph into a referee-invitation email. If it reads as specialist or hedged, rewrite it.

Logistics to include

  • Statement of originality and exclusivity (not published / not under review elsewhere).
  • Manuscript type (Report vs Research Article) and rough length.
  • Competing interests declaration (or "none").
  • Related manuscripts (yours) in press/under review, if any.
  • Suggested reviewers (a few) and opposed reviewers with brief reason, if applicable.
  • Any prior submission/transfer history if relevant.

Tone

  • Confident, specific, quantified — but not grandiose. Editors discount "groundbreaking/unprecedented".
  • No jargon walls; a chemistry editor should grasp a biology letter and vice versa.
  • Short paragraphs; the whole letter fits on one page.

Cover-letter pass for Science

Use this as a second-pass capability check. First lock the broad discovery claim, decisive evidence, uncertainty/limitations, and why the result belongs in a general-science weekly; then test whether the manuscript addresses general-science reviewers and editors who ask whether the result changes a broad field, is technically decisive, and can be understood outside the subdiscipline.

  • Primary move: Make the letter a routing document: discovery, breadth, decisive evidence, policy/field implication, and compliance in one editor-facing argument.
  • Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
  • Neighbor test: compare against Nature for similar broad-scope novelty, PNAS for academy-wide breadth, specialist journals when the claim is field-internal; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
  • Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.
Show full SKILL.md (275 more words)Show less

Before/after: the significance paragraph

The second paragraph is the one an editor pastes into a referee invitation. Make it copy-ready:

  • Weak (summary register): "In this manuscript we report the results of our study of protein T, which we characterized using cryo-EM and functional assays, revealing several interesting features of its conformational cycle."
  • Strong (significance register): "We show that transporter T uses a previously unseen occluded intermediate to move substrate — a gating step that current models of secondary active transport omit. Because this state is conserved across the superfamily, the finding revises how a broad membrane-biology and biophysics community should model transport, and it explains prior anomalous kinetics that had no mechanistic account."

The strong version names the advance, the breadth (who beyond the subfield cares), and the consequence (what changes) — in three sentences an editor can forward unedited.

Common cover-letter failure modes (and the fix)

Failure modeWhy it triggers a bounceFix
Reads as an abstractEditor learns what you did, not why it's broadLead paragraph 2 with the consequence for a field
Superlatives, no numbersEditors discount "groundbreaking"Replace each adjective with a quantity or a decisive comparison
Omits concurrent workLooks naive or evasiveOne sentence: "Concurrent work X did Y; we differ by Z"
No originality statementAdministrative bounceAdd the not-published / not-under-review line explicitly
Buries the hook after logisticsHook is missed in a 2-minute readFirst sentence carries the advance

Output format

【One-line advance restated】 "..."
【Broad-significance paragraph】 reviewer-invitation-ready? yes/no
【Novelty vs closest prior/concurrent work】 stated? yes/no
【Manuscript type + length】 ...
【Logistics checklist】 originality / COI / suggested-opposed reviewers / related subs
【Next】 sci-submission

Anti-patterns

  • Do not summarize the abstract; argue significance instead.
  • Do not use unsupported superlatives — quantify the advance.
  • Do not omit the originality/exclusivity statement.
  • Do not bury the hook below logistics; the first sentence carries the advance.

© 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 Science-Skills/skills/sci-cover-letter of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Sci Cover Letter 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.

Sci Cover Letter compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Sci Cover Letter this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Career-Ops Job Search Centercareer-ops-hq/career-ops74k—~3.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Reactive Resume Builderreactive-resume/reactive-resume44k—~2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Internship Project Preparation ToolLiuMengxuan04/shushu-internship-tool2.1k—~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Resume Tailoringvarunr89/resume-tailoring-skill7691 repos~8.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Offer Negotiationreactive-resume/reactive-resume44k—~10kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

Similar skills

  • Career-Ops Job Search Center

    career-ops-hq/career-ops

    Routes job-search requests to modes for evaluating offers, scanning portals, generating tailored CVs, tracking applications and drafting outreach, starting from a pasted job URL or description.

    74k GitHub stars~3.6k tokensUpdated today
    Business, Finance & HRAuto-check passed
  • Reactive Resume Builder

    reactive-resume/reactive-resume

    Builds resumes as valid JSON for the open-source Reactive Resume app by interviewing you, and can track job applications through its MCP tools.

    44k GitHub stars~2k tokensUpdated yesterday
    Business, Finance & HRAuto-check passed
  • Internship Project Preparation Tool

    LiuMengxuan04/shushu-internship-tool

    Turns a target internship job description into a resume-ready, interview-ready project by finding and auditing GitHub projects and drafting resume bullets and interview Q&A.

    2.1k GitHub stars~2.3k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    Business, Finance & HRAuto-check passed
  • Resume Tailoring

    varunr89/resume-tailoring-skill

    A skill your agent uses when creating tailored resumes for job applications - researches company/role, creates optimized templates, conducts branching experience discovery to surface undocumented…

    769 GitHub starsUsed in 1 repo~8.9k tokens
    Business, Finance & HRAuto-check passed
  • Offer Negotiation

    reactive-resume/reactive-resume

    Evaluates and negotiates job offers. An agent skill from reactive-resume/reactive-resume.

    44k GitHub stars~10k tokensUpdated yesterday
    Business, Finance & HRAuto-check passed
  • Good Story

    Rimagination/good-story

    A skill your agent uses when the user asks to find, sharpen, evaluate, rewrite, or explain the story in scientific or scholarly materials across disciplines, including manuscripts, grants, paper…

    134 GitHub starsUsed in 1 repo~2.9k tokens
    Business, Finance & HRAuto-check passed

More from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

All 2,387 skills in this repo
  • Aaag Data Analysis

    brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when running and reporting the analysis for an Annals of the American Association of Geographers manuscript — spatial statistics and modeling, remote-sensing accuracy, or…

    1.2k GitHub stars~1.3k tokensUpdated 14 days ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Aaag Literature Positioning

    brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when positioning an Annals of the American Association of Geographers manuscript in the literature — engaging geographic scholarship across the relevant area and the…

    1.2k GitHub stars~1.3k tokensUpdated 14 days ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Aaag Rebuttal

    brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when responding to an Annals of the American Association of Geographers decision letter (major/minor revision) — building a point-by-point response to the subject editor and…

    1.2k GitHub stars~1.4k tokensUpdated 14 days ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Aaag Research Design

    brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when defending the research design of an Annals of the American Association of Geographers manuscript — spatial/quantitative analysis and GIScience, remote-sensing and…

    1.2k GitHub stars~1.4k tokensUpdated 14 days ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Aaag Review Process

    brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when you need to understand how the Annals of the American Association of Geographers evaluates a manuscript — double-anonymous review routed through a subject editor by…

    1.2k GitHub stars~1.3k tokensUpdated 14 days ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Aaag Submission

    brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when running the final pre-submission preflight for the Annals of the American Association of Geographers via ScholarOne Manuscripts — area/article-type selection…

    1.2k GitHub stars~1.6k tokensUpdated 14 days ago
    Auto-check passed

Questions about Sci Cover Letter

What does Sci Cover Letter do?

A skill your agent uses when writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight, significance-forward pitch, not a summary, that lets the editor decide within two minutes whether…. Sci Cover Letter is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight, significance-forward pitch, not a summary, that lets the editor decide within two minutes whether the paper clears the broad-interest bar and should go out for external review.

When should I use Sci Cover Letter?

Sci Cover Letter fits situations like: writing the editor-facing cover letter for Science (AAAS) — a tight; significance-forward pitch; that lets the editor decide within two minutes whether the paper clears the broad-interest bar and should go out for external review.

How do I install Sci Cover Letter in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill sci-cover-letter -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (Science-Skills/skills/sci-cover-letter in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/sci-cover-letter in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Sci Cover Letter in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill sci-cover-letter -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (Science-Skills/skills/sci-cover-letter in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/sci-cover-letter in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Sci Cover Letter 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 sci-cover-letter -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/sci-cover-letter, .gemini/skills/sci-cover-letter, .github/skills/sci-cover-letter and .opencode/skills/sci-cover-letter in your project.

What does Sci Cover Letter need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Sci Cover Letter is instructions for the agent only.

Does Sci Cover Letter 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 Sci Cover Letter 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 Sci Cover Letter use?

Sci Cover Letter 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 Sci Cover Letter use?

About 1.5k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6k 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 Sci Cover Letter?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Sci Cover Letter: Career-Ops Job Search Center (career-ops-hq/career-ops, 74k stars), Reactive Resume Builder (reactive-resume/reactive-resume, 44k stars), Internship Project Preparation Tool (LiuMengxuan04/shushu-internship-tool, 2.1k stars) and Resume Tailoring (varunr89/resume-tailoring-skill, 769 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Sci Cover Letter?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,231 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.