Agent skill

Usenixsec Author Response

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

A skill your agent uses when reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion, handling required…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Usenixsec Author Response

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill usenixsec-author-response -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills usenixsec-author-response --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/USENIX-Security-Skills/skills/usenixsec-author-response .claude/skills/usenixsec-author-response && 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
usenixsec-author-response
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
615 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion, handling required…

  • Works in 4 steps: Convert the decision letter into a… → Deliver inside the two-week window; the… → Do not smuggle in new results the… → …
  • Reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion
  • SKILL.md covers Where the response sits in the…, Sorting the reviews before…, Drafting rules that fit this… and After the decision: shepherd…, plus 2 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Usenixsec Author Response is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion, handling required ethics-content revisions flagged mid-review, and working with a shepherd after an "Accepted on Shepherd Approval" decision.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

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

  • Reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion
  • Handling required ethics-content revisions flagged mid-review
  • Working with a shepherd after an Accepted on Shepherd Approval decision

Example prompts

  • “Accepted on Shepherd Approval”
  • “/usenixsec-author-response”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Convert the decision letter into a change matrix (request → edit → location) and
  2. Deliver inside the two-week window; the shepherd's sign-off is the acceptance.
  3. Do not smuggle in new results the committee never reviewed; flag anything beyond
  4. Track every edit against the camera-ready deadline for your cycle — shepherding

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

Usenixsec Author Response loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 80 tokens; SKILL.md has 615 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~80
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.4k

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). 615 words, ~1,366 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/usenixsec-author-response/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
usenixsec-author-response
description
Use when reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion, handling required ethics-content revisions flagged mid-review, and working with a shepherd after an "Accepted on Shepherd Approval" decision.

USENIX Security Author Response

USENIX Security gives authors two distinct speaking moments, and they obey different rules: the mid-review response to reviewers, and the post-decision exchange with a shepherd. This skill covers both. Mechanics shift per cycle — the '25 model was documented in detail on the reviewing-model page, the '26 model partially, and the '27 mechanics are 待核实 — so confirm the current instructions in HotCRP before drafting.

Where the response sits in the pipeline

In the '25 model (the last fully documented one): two reviews in round one; papers survive to round two if at least one reviewer sees a path to acceptance after online discussion; round two adds two more reviews; then authors respond; reviewers discuss again and decide. Two consequences follow:

  • By the time you respond, four reviewers have read the paper but the committee has not settled. The response's real audience is the discussion that follows it.
  • Papers cut at the early-reject notification never get a response window at all. There is no appeal lane inside the cycle; the recovery move is a revised resubmission (see usenixsec-review-process for the restriction rules).

One more '25-documented pattern worth planning for: submissions with inadequate ethics discussions were flagged during review, and authors were required to supply revised ethics content in the response phase. Treat an ethics question in a review as a compliance demand, not an opinion to debate.

Sorting the reviews before writing

Objection typeWhat it usually means at this venueResponse move
Threat model unrealisticReviewer rejects the attacker capabilitiesDefend with deployment evidence, or narrow the claim explicitly
Ethics gap / disclosure questionCompliance flag, possibly chair-visibleAnswer completely; state disclosure timeline and vendor contact status
Evaluation missing an adaptive attackerDefense papers' most common killPresent the adaptive experiment if it exists; commit precisely if it fits shepherding scope
Overlap with concurrent workCycle collision, common with two cycles/yearDate the overlap, differentiate mechanism and evidence
"Measurement may be artifact of vantage point"Methodology doubtShow cross-vantage or cross-time consistency numbers

Answer the compliance-shaped items first and fully; a brilliant technical rebuttal does not offset an unanswered disclosure question.

Show full SKILL.md (262 more words)Show less

Drafting rules that fit this venue

  • Number every point and quote the review fragment being answered; the discussion phase skims, and unanchored prose gets skipped.
  • Give evidence that already exists (a table row, an appendix reference, a number) priority over promises. Since '26 the largest change a paper can absorb after decision is a two-week shepherding pass — never promise revisions bigger than that window can hold.
  • Keep anonymity discipline: no identifying links, no "in our lab" phrasing.
  • If a reviewer misread, demonstrate the misreading with a page/section pointer and move on without scoring the point.
text
# Response skeleton (per review point)
[R2.3] "the scanner may overload targets"
  Facts: Section 5.2 caps probe rate at 1 req/s/host; opt-out honored within 24h
         (Appendix: Ethical Considerations, para 2).
  Change offered: none needed — pointer only.

[R1.4] "no adaptive attacker"
  Facts: new experiment, gradient-aware evader, detection drops 94%→81% (table below).
  Change offered: add as Sec 6.4 (~0.5 page); fits shepherding scope.

After the decision: shepherd mode

"Accepted on Shepherd Approval" (the '26 outcome replacing major revisions) means the committee wants the paper but conditions publication on named changes — clarifications, limitation discussions, toned-down claims — that are unlikely to change enthusiasm. Working rules:

  1. Convert the decision letter into a change matrix (request → edit → location) and send it to the shepherd before editing, so scope is agreed once.
  2. Deliver inside the two-week window; the shepherd's sign-off is the acceptance.
  3. Do not smuggle in new results the committee never reviewed; flag anything beyond the requested list explicitly and let the shepherd rule on it.
  4. Track every edit against the camera-ready deadline for your cycle — shepherding and final-paper preparation overlap (see usenixsec-camera-ready).

Reverify each cycle

  • Whether the current cycle includes an author response phase at all, its length, and its format (HotCRP field vs PDF) — '27 values 待核实.
  • The shepherding window length and whether "Accepted on Shepherd Approval" remains the intermediate outcome.
  • Any word/character limit on responses.

Output format

text
[Phase] mid-review response / shepherd exchange
[Compliance items] ethics or disclosure questions + answers drafted: yes/no
[Point map] review point → evidence → offered change (within shepherding scope?)
[Risk] points conceded or narrowed, and the wording
[Next deadline] response or shepherd deadline, camera-ready implications

© 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 USENIX-Security-Skills/skills/usenixsec-author-response of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Usenixsec Author Response 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.

Usenixsec Author Response compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Usenixsec Author Response this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Responsive Unitsthedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist74k—~472Automated safety check: PassMIT
Hermes Agent Skill AuthoringNousResearch/hermes-agent252k—~3.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Edbt Author Responsebrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Fast Author Responsebrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Acl Author Responsebrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Questions about Usenixsec Author Response

What does Usenixsec Author Response do?

A skill your agent uses when reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion, handling required…. Usenixsec Author Response is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion, handling required ethics-content revisions flagged mid-review, and working with a shepherd after an "Accepted on Shepherd Approval" decision.

When should I use Usenixsec Author Response?

Usenixsec Author Response fits situations like: reviews arrive from a USENIX Security Symposium cycle and the authors must respond — writing the rebuttal that survives online PC discussion; handling required ethics-content revisions flagged mid-review; working with a shepherd after an Accepted on Shepherd Approval decision.

How do I install Usenixsec Author Response in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Usenixsec Author Response in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill usenixsec-author-response -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (USENIX-Security-Skills/skills/usenixsec-author-response in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/usenixsec-author-response in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Usenixsec Author Response 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 usenixsec-author-response -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/usenixsec-author-response, .gemini/skills/usenixsec-author-response, .github/skills/usenixsec-author-response and .opencode/skills/usenixsec-author-response in your project.

What does Usenixsec Author Response need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Usenixsec Author Response is instructions for the agent only.

Does Usenixsec Author Response 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 Usenixsec Author Response 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 Usenixsec Author Response use?

Usenixsec Author Response 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 Usenixsec Author Response use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.5k 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 Usenixsec Author Response?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Usenixsec Author Response: Responsive Units (thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist, 74k stars), Hermes Agent Skill Authoring (NousResearch/hermes-agent, 252k stars), Edbt Author Response (brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, 1.2k stars) and Fast Author Response (brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, 1.2k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Usenixsec Author Response?

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.