fse-writing-style
Use when revising an ESEC/FSE paper for a practitioner-grounded software-engineering contribution on the first page, research-question contracts, a threats-to-validity section that argues rather than recites, evidence proportional to the claim, double-anonymous wording, and disciplined use of the ACM-template page budget.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill fse-writing-style --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.
# FSE Writing Style Use this when revising the main paper. FSE papers are PACMSE journal articles read by SE empiricists, so they need a **software-engineering contribution stated in the first page** and evidence a reviewer trusts. The failure this skill prevents is a technically fine paper that reads like a systems demo or an ML result with an SE title glued on. ## Revision rules - **Lead with the SE contribution:** the problem a practitioner recognizes, why the current state is inadequate, the contribution (technique and/or finding), the evidence, and what changes for software engineering. - **State research questions as contracts.** Each RQ should name what is measured and how it will be judged; every RQ must be answered explicitly in the results, and no result should exist without an RQ it serves. - **Pair every claim with proportional evidence** — real subjects, a fair baseline, a statistic with an effect size, or a qualitative code with agreement — not adjectives. - **Argue threats to validity; do not recite them.** Name the construct, internal, external, and conclusion threats that actually bite *this* study, and say what you did to bound each. A boilerplate threats paragrap
- Revision rules
- Empirical-SE paper skeleton
- Sentence-level rewrites
- Threats-to-validity discipline
- Vignette: compressing a three-RQ study
- Output format
What does the fse-writing-style skill do?
Use when revising an ESEC/FSE paper for a practitioner-grounded software-engineering contribution on the first page, research-question contracts, a threats-to-validity section that argues rather than recites, evidence proportional to the claim, double-anonymous wording, and disciplined use of the ACM-template page budget.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill fse-writing-style --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/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 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.