An editing skill for camera-ready academic writing.
I created this skill out of frustration with Opus 5's writing style when using agents for exploratory research. Prior humanizing skills generally improved the superficial style of writing but failed to fix the deeper issues that made Opus 5 incomprehensible. This skill was created by compiling writing tips across multiple deep research reports on academic writing and prior humanizer skills (see Credits). Afterwards, I personally tuned it by testing the skill on AI-generated reports and providing feedback.
Note
Writing is subjective, and this skill reflects just one of many styles and preferences. I welcome any feedback and contributions to improve this skill.
/plugin marketplace add alstonlo/camera-ready
/plugin install camera-ready@camera-ready
Invoke the Claude Code plugin with /camera-ready:camera-ready or the shorter /camera-ready unless another command already uses that name. To install updates, run /plugin marketplace update camera-ready, or enable automatic updates for the marketplace under Marketplaces in /plugin.
codex plugin marketplace add alstonlo/camera-ready
codex plugin add camera-ready@camera-readyCodex runs the skill only when you name it. To install updates, run codex plugin marketplace upgrade camera-ready.
npx skills add alstonlo/camera-ready --global --agent '*'This installs the skill for every agent the Skills CLI supports. Omit --global to install it only in the current project. If the Skills CLI does not support your agent, copy the whole skills/camera-ready/ folder into its skills directory, because the skill reads references/guide.md on every run.
In Claude Code, run /camera-ready followed by the request. In Codex, start the request with $camera-ready:camera-ready instead.
By default, the skill edits in lite mode. It reads the whole text and identifies its story, claims, and terminology. It then edits the text chunk by chunk, rereads it, and reports what changed along with questions for the author.
/camera-ready polish this section
/camera-ready tighten my abstract
For a more comprehensive edit, run the skill in full mode:
/camera-ready full polish this paper
/camera-ready full cut this to eight pages
Full mode records the paper's argument, each paragraph's purpose, the evidence for its claims, and terminology choices in audit notes. The skill uses these notes to edit for factual consistency, readability, and clear academic style while tracking changes and unresolved questions. Compared with lite mode, full mode should produce higher-quality revisions with greater consistency and attention to detail.
The audit notes are saved in .camera-ready/ at the project root, the directory where the session started. For example, notes for paper/main.tex go in .camera-ready/paper/main.notes.md. To store the notes elsewhere, name a directory in the request, set the CAMERA_READY_ROOT environment variable, or name a directory in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md.
Writing guidance compiled from:
- Several deep research reports on academic writing
- conorbronsdon/avoid-ai-writing
- blader/humanizer
- brandonwise/humanizer
- danyuchn/asd-ste100-skill
See REFERENCES.md for the sources cited by the deep research reports and for sources I found myself.
MIT