prl-methods
Use when deciding what methodological detail belongs in a Physical Review Letters body versus Supplemental Material, so a physicist can trust the result without the Letter becoming a long paper. Partitions methods; does not design figures or run analysis.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill prl-methods --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.
# PRL Methods (prl-methods) ## When to trigger - Your Methods text is several paragraphs of apparatus, sample, or derivation detail - You cannot tell what a reader *needs* versus what is reassuring completeness - Reviewers of a prior draft asked for more rigor, and you are tempted to add bulk - The Letter is over length and methods are a prime trimming target - You are unsure which derivation steps to keep inline versus move to SM ## The trust-minimum principle In a Letter, methods exist to let a competent physicist **believe the central claim** — not to enable full replication inline. Full replication detail lives in Supplemental Material. Keep in the body only what is load-bearing for trust: - The essential experimental configuration or theoretical setup (one compact description). - The key control(s) that rule out the obvious alternative explanation. - The decisive statistical/systematic statement (uncertainties, significance) for the headline number. - The one or two equations that define the quantity being claimed. Everything else — calibration procedures, sample growth, full Hamiltonians, lengthy derivations, parameter sweeps, additional checks — goes to SM and is cited inlin
- When to trigger
- The trust-minimum principle
- Partition table
- Rigor without bulk
- Worked micro-example: compressing an apparatus paragraph
- Sentence patterns that buy trust cheaply
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
What does the prl-methods skill do?
Use when deciding what methodological detail belongs in a Physical Review Letters body versus Supplemental Material, so a physicist can trust the result without the Letter becoming a long paper. Partitions methods; does not design figures or run analysis.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill prl-methods --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.