Paper Details

Paper Details

Conventions for producing a detailed Markdown explainer of an academic paper. The aim of this skill is to describe the paper accurately, not to critique it.

This skill follows the shared sourced-writing conventions defined in documenting-with-sources. Read documenting-with-sources before drafting.

1. Deliverable structure

1.0 Output location

Write the explainer as a .md file under the project's reports/ directory, where "the project" is the root that contains the source paper PDF. Create the directory if it does not exist.

• Path: {project-root}/reports/{paper-filename-base}.md
• Example: if the PDF is at /path/to/project/papers/foo.pdf, the output is /path/to/project/reports/foo.md

Do not write next to the PDF, and do not write at the project root. Do not ask the user for the output path — determine it mechanically by the rule above.

1.1 Opening

In this order:

1. Title (# {paper title} — Detailed Explainer)
2. Bibliographic info (authors, affiliations, venue, year, arXiv/DOI, URL)
3. Full abstract — quote the original in a code block per writing-quotation; if the original is in a non-working language, place the translation alongside as a separate paragraph in the same block.

1.2 Body section structure

The body's section structure follows the paper's. If the paper has Section 1 Introduction, Section 2 Method, Section 3 Results, ..., the explainer uses the same order and the same headings.

Add explainer-only sections (e.g. "Strengths of the paper", "Limitations of the paper", "Source list") after the paper's own section structure.

1.3 Bullet lists vs prose

Pick the form by the nature of the content.

• Bullet lists fit enumerations of parallel items — variable lists, definitions of evaluation metrics, table-column descriptions, comparison points between methods, etc. When the content is genuinely list-shaped, the prose form blurs the boundaries between items.
• Prose fits relationships, causal flow, contextual explanation. When the reader needs to understand why items appear together or how they form a single argument, prose is what holds it together.

1.4 Figures and tables: extract as images

Never reconstruct a figure or table from scratch (no hand-written HTML tables, no redrawn SVG figures). Extract them as images from the source paper and insert those images into the deliverable (.md or HTML). Hand reconstruction introduces transcription errors and loses the original layout — bold, underline, colour-coded legends — so it is forbidden.

Use the script bundled with this skill:

uv run {this-skill-dir}/scripts/extract_images.py <PDF path>

• The script finds Figure N / Table N captions in the PDF and clip-renders the figure/table region directly above each caption — the bounding box of vector drawings, rules, and embedded images — at 300 dpi. Figures and tables are usually drawn as vectors with no embedded raster, so extraction is region rendering, not pulling out an embedded image.
• Output defaults to {project-root}/images-from-papers/ as {paper-filename-base}-fig{N}.png / {paper-filename-base}-table{N}.png. The extraction list is recorded in {base}-manifest.json in the same directory.
• A multi-panel float (e.g. one Table float that contains panels (a)–(f)) is extracted as a single image, matching the single float in the paper.
• After extraction, insert the images from images-from-papers/ into the deliverable. In .md, reference them by relative path, e.g. ![Figure N](../images-from-papers/{base}-fig{N}.png). In an HTML deliverable created with html, embedding as a base64 data URI is acceptable.
• Add the translated caption as a separate paragraph below the image. The caption text inside the image stays in the original language (it is not redrawn), so the translation goes outside the image.
• If the script occasionally drops a figure/table or includes too much margin, raise --dpi or inspect the output and adjust the pymupdf clip rectangle for that item. Either way, do not abandon the image-extraction approach.

2. Quotation and source reference

2.0 Output is built around translated quotation blocks

Build the explainer primarily out of "original quotation + translation" blocks that cover the paper's body in full. Do not make summarised, paraphrased prose the main act. Keep the reader able to check the original against the translation throughout the document.

Prose — the writer's own text — is a complement to the quotation-led flow, added only when one of the following holds:

• The connection between quotation blocks is unclear, and the relationship or logical flow between sections or paragraphs needs bridging.
• A supplementary explanation — variable definitions, prerequisite knowledge, how to read a figure or table, the first-occurrence definition of a term — is genuinely useful to the reader.

Where neither holds, do not re-summarise the original in prose; let the quotation block speak for itself. Do not settle into a "quotes carry the gist, prose summarises" split.

To convey the paper's claims accurately, include direct quotations from the original. A summary alone does not let the reader judge whether the writer's interpretation is correct.

Within the [label (YYYY/MM), location] structure defined in documenting-with-sources, the paper-details skill fills the label slot differently depending on which work is referenced.

Reference to the paper under review

When referring to the paper under review, omit the author and year and cite the position only, in the form [p.X, Section Y.Z]. Since the entire explainer is about a single paper, the author does not need to be repeated each time.

Examples: [p.4, Section 1], [p.21, (15)], [p.31, Figure 2].

Reference to other works

For other works that the paper cites, use [author-short (YYYY)] inline.

• Pin location with a section, page, table, or figure number.
• Do not abbreviate the list of cited works with phrases like "...and others". List each work individually with its author and year. The reader of the explainer depends on this list — citing the explainer's host paper alone does not substitute for naming the works the paper references.

3. Equations

3.1 Syntax

• Equations are written in LaTeX. Inline as $...$, display as $$...$$.
• Forbidden: putting equations inside a code block. Forbidden: writing equations in plain-text form, pseudo-code form, or anything other than LaTeX syntax.

3.2 Variable definitions

Every symbol in an equation is unknown to the reader until it is defined. Before presenting an equation, define every variable and symbol that appears in it. Do not place an equation without its variable definitions in scope.

In equation-heavy sections (theory, method formalisation), put a variable table at the top of the section. Group variables by role. Each entry includes:

• The symbol (in LaTeX).
• What it means (one sentence).
• A note that helps intuition (concrete example, value range, behaviour in special cases).

Example:

Inputs:

- $n$: number of characters in the input text. The length of the user's prompt.
- $K$: the model's context-window length in characters. Inputs longer than this cannot be passed to the model directly.

Planner outputs:

- $k^*$: branching factor at each level — how many chunks to split into. With $k^*=5$ the input is split into five chunks at each level.
- $\tau^*$: threshold below which the chunk is sent to the LLM as-is, without further splitting. With $\tau^*=26{,}000$, chunks of 26,000 characters or fewer go straight to the LLM.

In sections with few equations, defining variables in-line before and after each equation is acceptable — but the principle that no equation appears with undefined symbols still holds.

4. Numerical results

• Present experimental results in tables when possible.
• Place the proposed method and baselines side by side.
• Transcribe numbers exactly as they appear in the paper. Do not round or approximate.
• Before showing the table, define each column and each metric in a preceding bullet list. By the time the reader sees the numbers, the meaning of each column is clear.
• Do not use generic words like "accuracy" or "performance" loosely. Use the metric name the paper itself defines (classification accuracy, pass rate, pass@1, etc.).
• If the same word is used in different senses across the paper (e.g. a method name that means "the best single result" in a table but "the entire procedure" in the body), call out the polysemy explicitly.