Agent skill

Ylj Thesis And Contribution

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

A skill your agent uses when sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece.

MITAuto-check passedEducation

Install Ylj Thesis And Contribution

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ylj-thesis-and-contribution -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills ylj-thesis-and-contribution --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/Yale-Law-Journal-Skills/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution .claude/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution && 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
ylj-thesis-and-contribution
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~2k tokens
SKILL.md length
986 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece.

  • Works in 4 steps: Hook: "The legal system currently… → Why now: a doctrinal split,… → Why YLJ: the claim travels beyond a… → …
  • Sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, The one-sentence thesis test, Name the contribution (most… and Build the YLJ contribution…, plus 7 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Ylj Thesis And Contribution is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece. It forces a falsifiable, generalist thesis and names the contribution type; it does not search prior literature (use ylj-preemption-check) or build the argument (use ylj-argument-structure).

Its SKILL.md is about 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. 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

  • Sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece
  • Tasks that involve Essays and academic help

Example prompts

  • “/ylj-thesis-and-contribution”

Workflow steps

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

  1. Hook: "The legal system currently assumes X, but this piece shows Y."
  2. Why now: a doctrinal split, institutional change, regulatory moment, social practice, or scholarly blind spot makes the claim timely.
  3. Why YLJ: the claim travels beyond a narrow specialty and changes how a general legal audience understands the field.
  4. Risk: the strongest objection is named honestly, not hidden until Part III.

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

Ylj Thesis And Contribution loads about 2k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 82 tokens; SKILL.md has 986 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~82
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~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). 986 words, ~2,010 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
ylj-thesis-and-contribution
description
Use when sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece. It forces a falsifiable, generalist thesis and names the contribution type; it does not search prior literature (use ylj-preemption-check) or build the argument (use ylj-argument-structure).

Thesis & Contribution (ylj-thesis-and-contribution)

A YLJ piece lives or dies on a single, sharp claim that a generalist reader can restate. Student editors (and faculty advisors they consult) reject pieces whose "thesis" is really a topic or a survey. This skill nails the claim and labels the contribution; it does not yet prove novelty (ylj-preemption-check) or sequence the argument (ylj-argument-structure).

When to trigger

  • You can name the area but cannot state the claim in one sentence
  • A reader asks "so what's the argument?" and you give a paragraph, not a sentence
  • The introduction promises several things and the reader cannot tell which is the point
  • You are unsure whether the contribution is descriptive, doctrinal, theoretical, or normative

The one-sentence thesis test

Write: "This [Article/Essay] argues that ____, and therefore ____." It must be:

  • Contestable — a smart reader could disagree; if no one would dispute it, it is not a thesis.
  • Generalist — legible to a reader outside the subfield (see ylj-topic-selection).
  • Load-bearing — every Part of the piece exists to establish or apply this claim.
  • Yours — it is the move you make, not a restatement of existing scholarship.

If you need "and" three times, you have three theses; pick the one the piece is actually about.

Name the contribution (most YLJ pieces blend two)

TypeWhat it addsTell
DescriptiveA pattern no one has named (a doctrine is incoherent, a practice is widespread)"Courts/agencies are actually doing X."
DoctrinalA better reading of authority (statute, precedent, constitutional text)"The correct rule is X, not Y."
TheoreticalA framework that reorganizes how we understand a field"X is best understood as Y."
NormativeA reform: what the law should be and who should change it"Congress/the Court should do X."
CriticalAn immanent critique exposing a hidden assumption"The standard account rests on an untenable Z."

State which type(s) you are making — and to whom the normative payoff is addressed (court, Congress, agency, bar), because YLJ readers include all of them.

Build the YLJ contribution contract

Do not leave the contribution as a label. Convert it into a four-part contract that a student editor can defend to the Articles & Essays Committee:

Contract fieldRequired answerFailure mode
ClaimWhat is the one legal proposition the piece asks the reader to accept?A topic, survey, or issue-spotter memo
InterventionWhat legal understanding changes if the claim is right?A restatement of an existing debate
Authority baseWhich doctrine, statute, institutional practice, archive, empirical record, or theory bears the weight?A thesis that floats above sources
PayoffWho should reason or act differently: court, legislature, agency, litigants, scholars, or legal educators?A "so what" paragraph with no actor

The contract must be short enough to fit in the first-page roadmap, but strong enough to survive preemption review. If one field is missing, route back before polishing prose.

Student-editor screen

YLJ's first screen is by excellent generalist student editors, not specialists already committed to your subfield. Before moving to ylj-preemption-check, test whether the thesis can pass a two-minute committee pitch:

  1. Hook: "The legal system currently assumes X, but this piece shows Y."
  2. Why now: a doctrinal split, institutional change, regulatory moment, social practice, or scholarly blind spot makes the claim timely.
  3. Why YLJ: the claim travels beyond a narrow specialty and changes how a general legal audience understands the field.
  4. Risk: the strongest objection is named honestly, not hidden until Part III.

A thesis that only works after ten minutes of background is probably too narrow, too jargon-heavy, or still a literature review. Use ylj-writing-style later, but fix the claim here first.

Show full SKILL.md (388 more words)Show less

Preemption handoff

This skill does not perform the literature search, but it must create a search-ready hypothesis for ylj-preemption-check. Output the following before leaving:

  • Search terms: the doctrine, statutory phrase, institutional label, and conceptual term that would surface near-preempting work.
  • Closest likely rivals: at least three article/note/work-in-progress categories that might already make the move.
  • Distinctive move: the exact sentence explaining why your thesis is not merely an application, update, or footnote to those rivals.
  • Fallback thesis: a narrower but still interesting version if the broad claim is preempted.

Do not claim novelty here. The right output is "novelty hypothesis ready to test," not "no one has done this."

Stress-test the contribution

  • The "we already knew that" test — if a knowledgeable reader says it, the descriptive layer is thin; deepen or drop it.
  • The "so what" test — articulate the consequence if you are right; a claim with no stakes is not YLJ-worthy.
  • The "compared to what" test — name the prevailing view your claim displaces (this previews ylj-preemption-check).
  • The "committee pitch" test — a generalist student editor can explain the claim, why now, and why YLJ without reading your whole draft.
  • The "authority weight" test — the claimed intervention rests on sources the piece can actually prove, not on a clever abstract frame.

Checklist

  • Thesis fits the one-sentence template and is contestable
  • A generalist reader can restate it without your jargon
  • Contribution type(s) named; normative addressee identified
  • The prevailing view the claim displaces is named
  • Every planned Part maps to establishing or applying the claim
  • Contribution contract completed: claim, intervention, authority base, payoff
  • Committee-pitch version names hook, timeliness, YLJ fit, and strongest objection
  • Preemption handoff ready: search terms, likely rivals, distinctive move, fallback thesis

Anti-patterns

  • A "thesis" that is a topic ("This Article examines X") rather than a claim
  • Three theses stitched with "and" — the piece reads as unfocused to a student editor
  • A purely descriptive contribution dressed as theory (no framework actually emerges)
  • A normative payoff with no named decision-maker who could act on it
  • Overclaiming novelty before running ylj-preemption-check
  • A generalist pitch that depends on prestige cues, topical buzz, or urgency without a legal intervention
  • A "novelty" claim that has no search terms or likely rivals for the preemption check

Output format

【Thesis】"This [Article/Essay] argues that ___, and therefore ___."
【Contribution】descriptive / doctrinal / theoretical / normative / critical (+ blend)
【Contract】claim / intervention / authority base / payoff
【Committee pitch】hook + why now + why YLJ + strongest objection
【Displaces】the prevailing view this claim challenges
【Addressee】who should act on the normative payoff
【Preemption handoff】search terms + closest likely rivals + distinctive move + fallback thesis
【Next】ylj-preemption-check to confirm the claim is genuinely new

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 Yale-Law-Journal-Skills/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Ylj Thesis And Contribution 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.

Ylj Thesis And Contribution compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Ylj Thesis And Contribution this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Academic Paper StrategistAAASS554/codex-academic-paper-skills5391 repos~2.7kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Modeling Paper Rubric and Model Selectoryushui2022/MathModel-Skill4541 repos~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Humanities Thesisganzhi-black/humanities-thesis-skill637—~1.7kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Skill Thesis Writeryanlin-cheng/skill-thesis-writer209—~1.6kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Thesis CreatorStars-OC/thesis-creator230—~2.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about Ylj Thesis And Contribution

What does Ylj Thesis And Contribution do?

A skill your agent uses when sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece. Ylj Thesis And Contribution is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece.

When should I use Ylj Thesis And Contribution?

Ylj Thesis And Contribution fits situations like: sharpening the central legal-scholarly claim and contribution for a The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) piece; tasks that involve Essays and academic help.

How do I install Ylj Thesis And Contribution in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ylj-thesis-and-contribution -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (Yale-Law-Journal-Skills/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Ylj Thesis And Contribution in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ylj-thesis-and-contribution -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (Yale-Law-Journal-Skills/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Ylj Thesis And Contribution 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 ylj-thesis-and-contribution -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution, .gemini/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution, .github/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution and .opencode/skills/ylj-thesis-and-contribution in your project.

What does Ylj Thesis And Contribution need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Ylj Thesis And Contribution is instructions for the agent only.

Does Ylj Thesis And Contribution 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 Ylj Thesis And Contribution 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 Ylj Thesis And Contribution use?

Ylj Thesis And Contribution 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 Ylj Thesis And Contribution use?

About 2k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 8k 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 Ylj Thesis And Contribution?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Ylj Thesis And Contribution: Academic Paper Strategist (AAASS554/codex-academic-paper-skills, 539 stars), Modeling Paper Rubric and Model Selector (yushui2022/MathModel-Skill, 454 stars), Humanities Thesis (ganzhi-black/humanities-thesis-skill, 637 stars) and Skill Thesis Writer (yanlin-cheng/skill-thesis-writer, 209 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Ylj Thesis And Contribution?

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.