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name: nature-polishing description: >- Polish, restructure or translate existing scholarly drafts from files or project manuscripts while preserving scientific meaning. Use for 根据这个文件润色，投 ASC, 论文润色、写得更生动自然、读起来顺一点、减少生硬或模板化表达, and journal-specific editing, paragraph logic, terminology, Results compression and LaTeX layout. Preserve the draft language unless translation is requested. Drafting missing manuscript content belongs to nature-writing; file explanation alone is not editing.

Nature-Style Academic Polishing — Router

This skill is split into two layers:

• A static layer under static/ that holds versioned, reusable content fragments (core principles, paper-type playbooks, per-section guidance, language-specific rules, per-journal style).
• A dynamic layer (this file plus manifest.yaml) that detects the request's axes and loads only the fragments needed for the current job.

Do not try to apply the polishing logic from memory or from this router. Always load fragments from disk as described below.

Direct file polishing

For manuscript revision, read static/core/file-polishing.md through always_load. It governs scope inference, language preservation, proportionate evidence checking and verification annotations across all journal routes. Short natural-language requests are sufficient; no fixed prompt or author questionnaire is required. Older guide examples asking to confirm or fill a template are planning aids, not mandatory pauses. Explicit scope restrictions and approval stages still apply. Read ../nature-shared/core/natural-academic-prose.md for both ordinary polish and requests for vivid, natural or less formulaic prose. Keep layout-only work on its existing specialized route.

Routing protocol

Follow these five steps every time the skill is invoked.

1. Load the manifest and the core layer

Read manifest.yaml. It declares the axes (paper_type, section, language, journal), the allowed values, and the file paths each value maps to.

Also read every file listed under always_load. These hold the default stance, failure-mode diagnosis, ethics, and output format that apply to every polish job.

2. Detect the axis values for this request

For each axis in the manifest, decide the value using the manifest's detect: hint and the user's input:

• paper_type — research / methods / hypothesis / algorithmic / review. Default: research.
• section — abstract / intro / results / discussion / conclusion / title / methods. May be multiple. Infer from the draft and context first; use the direct-file workflow for unresolved scope.
• language — en or zh-to-en. Detect from the draft itself.
• journal — asc / eaai / isa / kbs / neurocomputing / measurement / ieee-trel / eswa / nature / nat-comms / nat-mach-intell / generic. Use the manifest’s aliases and applicability rules; default to generic. Match named journal targets rather than general topic words. Nature means the flagship journal; use each configured subjournal’s own key.

State the detected axis values in one short line to the user before proceeding, so they can correct you cheaply.

For Expert Systems with Applications (ESWA, Expert Syst. Appl.), use journal=eswa and read static/fragments/journal/eswa.md. Its shared ESWA contract overrides incompatible Nature-specific journal defaults; retain the normal scientific workflow and evidence safeguards. For layout jobs that skip prose axes, read ../nature-shared/journal-formats/eswa.md directly when ESWA submission requirements affect the layout.

3. Load the matching fragments

For every axis except section, read the file mapped in the manifest. Skip section routing for layout-only work or free-floating prose without a section context.

Resolve each requested section before loading its guidance:

1. Look up journal_sections[journal] in the manifest. If present, read its profile and check the stated manuscript/domain applicability. Do not assume a journal match alone makes a narrow corpus applicable.
2. If applicable and the section has a mapping, read that mapped file instead of the default axes.section.values fragment and its generic deep section reference (for example references/introduction.md). The mapped file contains both the section plan and detailed journal-specific writing/revision logic.
3. If absent or inapplicable, use the original section fragment and on-demand references. Keep the recognized journal and its submission requirements; do not substitute another journal's profile.
4. For multiple sections, resolve each separately. For a full manuscript, first identify the actual sections/functions, then read the relevant mapped guides. Do not require separate Related Work or Discussion headings to use their logic.

Paths in the manifest are relative to this skill directory; links inside a reference are relative to that reference. Journal adaptations live beside their original counterparts with a -<journal>.md suffix and a matching -<journal>-zh.md Chinese version. Writing owns the shared chapter content; polishing points to those exact files instead of maintaining a second copy. When a mapped guide requests a finer template, follow its matching journal-specific links. English is the default reference language; do not load both languages unless comparison is requested. No files are discovered merely by being placed in a folder. Apply this resolved section choice to later instructions in core workflows, task fragments, or reference tables as well. With an active override, do not additionally load the default deep section guide or Nature-only corpus/style examples; load general examples only when requested or needed and compatible with the selected guide. Preserve shared evidence/ethics constraints, terminology, paper-type guidance, language rules, and the original output format. The selected guide controls section organization where defaults differ; the current journal contract controls official requirements, never the corpus.

Do not read every fragment in static/. Load only what step 2 selected.

4. Polish using the loaded material

Apply the loaded fragments in this priority order, matching the paper type -> section job -> paragraph logic -> claim/evidence/boundary -> sentence polish rule from core/failure-modes.md:

1. Paper-type playbook (architecture, writing order).
2. Resolved section-specific job and failure modes from step 3.
3. Journal-specific framing and constraints.
4. Language-specific sentence and paragraph rules (apply last).
5. Core stance and ethics throughout.

Run static/core/file-polishing.md for manuscript revisions. Consult relevant evidence when needed; correct within scope or flag unresolved issues rather than inventing content. Run the shared natural-prose check before returning the revision.

For Results, full-main-text compression, main-versus-SI allocation, or prose added during revision, load ../nature-shared/core/main-text-discipline.md before sentence polishing. Classify each result, retain the shortest sufficient evidence chain, and require every addition to trigger a deletion or replacement check across the affected paragraph.

For flagship Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Machine Intelligence, or another Nature Portfolio title, load the matching shared Nature-style corpus guidance:

• Results or Discussion → ../nature-shared/core/nature-results-discussion.md
• Introduction or whole-manuscript narrative → ../nature-shared/core/nature-introduction.md
• Abstract → ../nature-shared/core/nature-abstract.md

Preserve claim escalation, the fast question funnel, Introduction–Results alignment, discovery-centred abstract compression, evidence-bound local interpretation, and cross-Results synthesis. These defaults were initially distilled from published NMI papers; treat them as corpus-derived guidance, not official policy, and obey the target journal's current rules when they differ.

For any Discussion polish or restructuring job, also load ../nature-shared/core/discussion-argument-language.md. Use its function labels to remove Results replay, repair the movement from specific findings to bounded implications, calibrate modal and reporting verbs to evidence strength, and make limitations and future work resolve named claim boundaries. Treat it as general writing guidance, not journal policy.

5. Reach for references only when needed

The files under references/ are deep references, not defaults. Open them on demand per the references.on_demand table in the manifest, for example when the user explicitly asks for phrasebank-style alternatives or a stricter style audit.

When the target is Nature Machine Intelligence and exact limits, availability sections, conference-extension disclosure or production checks affect the revision, load ../nature-shared/journal-formats/nature-machine-intelligence.md.

When the job is a whole manuscript rather than a passage, or the text has already been through more than one round of editing, also load ../nature-shared/core/consistency-sweep.md. Polishing passage by passage cannot see accumulated drift: one experimental factor under several names, the same quantity in two units, a metric at two precisions, or a superlative the paper's own table contradicts. Sweep for those before working on sentences, and repeat the sweep until a pass finds nothing new.

Layout/typesetting (排版) requests are different. If the user asks to fix placement rather than wording — loose/sparse pages, stranded headings, figures that don't fill the page or split across pages, "Float too large", multi-panel arrangement, sparse Supplementary Information — skip the prose axes (paper_type, section, language, journal) and load references/latex-layout.md directly. That file is self-contained: it carries the diagnosis workflow (render → contact-sheet → read the log), the float-glue and [H]/\clearpage/placeins patterns, and the "regenerate wide figures taller at the source" rule. Always compile and visually inspect rendered pages before and after — never judge layout from the .tex alone.

Why this split

• The static layer is versioned and reviewable. Register journal aliases and the journal fragment in the manifest. For journal-specific chapter logic, additionally register a profile and section paths under journal_sections; no further router change is needed for the next journal.
• The dynamic layer keeps each invocation cheap: only the fragments relevant to this draft enter context, instead of the full 1000-line monolith.
• The router itself is short on purpose. Update fragments, not this file, when adding scope.