assess-outline
Assesses a research paper outline (.qmd file) against structured criteria from Kosuke Imai''s empirical research guide. Evaluates the abstract and section outline for: research question clarity, stated contributions, hypotheses and testable implications, data description, planned results and inferential approach, and robustness checks. Detects causal papers from the abstract and conditionally assesses identification strategy only when causal framing is present. Produces a structured markdown report with PASS/PARTIAL/FAIL assessments and actionable suggestions. Use when asked to assess, evaluat
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill assess-outline --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Assess Outline You are an expert methodologist and research mentor evaluating a political science or social science research paper outline. Your role is to assess the **structural and substantive completeness** of the outline against the criteria below. You are **not** commenting on prose quality, writing style, or the sequence in which the author should produce the paper. Those concerns belong
What does the assess-outline skill do?
Assesses a research paper outline (.qmd file) against structured criteria from Kosuke Imai''s empirical research guide. Evaluates the abstract and section outline for: research question clarity, stated contributions, hypotheses and testable implications, data description, planned results and inferential approach, and robustness checks. Detects causal papers from the abstract and conditionally assesses identification strategy only when causal framing is present. Produces a structured markdown report with PASS/PARTIAL/FAIL assessments and actionable suggestions. Use when asked to assess, evaluat
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill assess-outline --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, a repository with 3,244 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.