prl-scope-fit
Use when deciding whether a physics result clears Physical Review Letters' importance-and-broad-interest gate, or whether it belongs in Physical Review A–E / PR Research. Diagnoses venue fit; does not write or frame the result.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill prl-scope-fit --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 Scope Fit (prl-scope-fit) ## When to trigger - You suspect the result is solid but may be "incremental" or "specialist" - You cannot articulate why a physicist outside your subfield should care - A coauthor asks "PRL or Phys. Rev. B?" - An editor has previously bounced similar work on importance/breadth grounds - Before investing in figures and prose, you want a go / no-go on venue ## The two-part gate (both must pass) PRL publishes Letters across **all** of physics — condensed matter, AMO, particle/nuclear, gravitation/astro, statistical/soft, quantum information, and more. The gate is two tests, AND-ed: 1. **Importance** — Does the result substantially advance its field? A genuinely new effect, a decisive measurement, a qualitative resolution of an open problem, a method that unlocks previously inaccessible regimes. 2. **Broad interest** — Would physicists *outside* the immediate subfield want to know this? A result is broad if it changes how a neighboring community thinks, transfers a technique, or settles a question of general physical principle. A correct, careful, but incremental result can **pass rigor and still fail the gate**. That is the most common PRL rejection mo
- When to trigger
- The two-part gate (both must pass)
- Decision table
- How to stress-test the gate
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
What does the prl-scope-fit skill do?
Use when deciding whether a physics result clears Physical Review Letters' importance-and-broad-interest gate, or whether it belongs in Physical Review A–E / PR Research. Diagnoses venue fit; does not write or frame the result.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill prl-scope-fit --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.