Paper Planning

This is a pre-writing planning framework for academic papers that runs you through four stages: story design (task-challenge-insight-contribution), experiment planning (comparisons and ablations), figure sketching, and a four-week timeline. The counterintuitive tactics are the best part: write a mock rejection letter first to identify weak points, design ablations before polishing your method text, and define your narrowest defensible claim before expanding. It's opinionated about sequencing (pipeline figure before any writing, Introduction and Method drafts to your advisor by week three). Use this before you start drafting. Once you're actually writing sections, hand off to the paper-writing skill instead.

skills.sh installs: 428
GitHub stars: 488
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add evoscientist/evoskills --skill paper-planning --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

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Paper Planning

A structured approach to planning academic papers before writing begins. Covers four key activities: Story design, Experiment planning, Figure design, and Timeline management.

When to Use This Skill

If you don't yet have an idea, use the research-ideation skill first to find a problem and design a solution.

User wants to plan a paper before writing
User asks about structuring a paper's story or contributions
User needs to plan experiments (comparisons, ablations)
User wants to design pipeline figures or teaser figures
User asks about writing timelines or submission schedules

Planning Overview

Paper planning follows four steps, ideally completed before writing begins:

Step 1: Story Design     → What is the narrative? What are the contributions?
Step 2: Experiment Plan   → What experiments prove our claims?
Step 3: Figure Design     → How do we visually communicate the method?
Step 4: Timeline          → When does each section get written?