---

name: ci-workflow description: Use as the entry point for any Critical Inquiry (CI) essay. Routes to the right CI sub-skill based on where you are in the lifecycle and which format (Article, Critical Response, Review) fits. CI is an interdisciplinary journal of criticism and theory in the arts and humanities; the router's job is to keep the project pointed at a bold theoretical intervention with interdisciplinary stakes. It dispatches; it does not draft content.

Critical Inquiry Workflow Router (ci-workflow)

The orchestrator for a Critical Inquiry submission. Figure out the stage and the format, then send the user to the matching skill. CI is interdisciplinary criticism and theory — not a single discipline's house organ — so the router's first job is to make sure the essay is built around a theoretical intervention that matters across fields, not a competent reading with no stakes.

When to trigger

• Starting a new CI essay and unsure where to begin
• Mid-project and unsure which skill applies next
• Deciding among the three formats (Article, Critical Response, Review)
• Returning with a decision letter (route to ci-revision-and-response)

First question: which format?

Situation	Format	Route to
Full original argument, interdisciplinary stakes	Article (≤ 9,500 words)	normal pipeline below
Reply to or debate with a published CI piece	Critical Response (≤ 3,000 words)	ci-argument-and-intervention + ci-scholarly-positioning
Short notice of a book/exhibition	Review (≤ 500 words)	ci-writing-style + ci-submission
A themed cluster of essays	Special issue (editor-proposed)	ci-review-process (proposal route)

The 9,500-word article cap includes discursive notes and all bibliographical information — plan the notes into the budget from the start (see ci-writing-style).

Routing map (stage → skill)

Is this a CI-shaped problem?       → ci-topic-selection
Whose conversation am I entering?  → ci-scholarly-positioning
What is the intervention?          → ci-argument-and-intervention
What objects does it read?         → ci-evidence-and-objects
Which theory, used how?            → ci-theory-and-method
How is the essay built?            → ci-structure-and-exposition
Does the prose earn the claim?     → ci-writing-style
Notes / images / Chicago style?    → ci-citation-and-style
How will it be judged?             → ci-review-process
Ready to submit?                   → ci-submission
Got a decision / revise request?   → ci-revision-and-response

Default order

topic-selection → scholarly-positioning → argument-and-intervention → evidence-and-objects → theory-and-method → structure-and-exposition → writing-style → citation-and-style → review-process → submission → revision-and-response

Iterate: most essays loop argument ↔ objects ↔ theory several times before the prose settles.

Symptom → route (when the stage is unclear)

Symptom in the draft	Actual problem	Route to
Sentences polished, paragraphs still reorderable	Structure, not prose	ci-structure-and-exposition
Readers praise the readings yet ask "so what?"	No intervention yet	ci-argument-and-intervention
Theory citations pile up while the claim stalls	Theory as décor	ci-theory-and-method
Claim sounds right; nothing on the page earns it	Objects not testing it	ci-evidence-and-objects
Word count blown though the body reads lean	Notes eating the cap	ci-citation-and-style
Confident essay; only one subfield would care	Fit and framing	ci-topic-selection

Two routing mistakes to catch early

• Format drift. A Critical Response swelling past ~3,000 words is usually an Article trying to happen — reroute it into the full pipeline; an "Article" whose real content is a quarrel with one published CI piece should shrink into a Response.
• Late-stage gatekeeping. Author-secured permissions, 300 ppi image files, and Chicago-note discipline are pipeline stages, not submission-day chores; route image-heavy essays through ci-citation-and-style early — rights can outlast a decision.

Anti-patterns

• Treating CI like a single-discipline journal — the intervention must travel across fields
• A survey or literature review with no claim of its own (CI wants an intervention, not a digest)
• Theory used as decoration rather than as an instrument that does work on an object
• Skipping image permissions and Chicago-note discipline until the end

Router pass for Critical Inquiry

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the object, theoretical stakes, interpretive turn, and permission/citation discipline; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: humanities reviewers who expect a strong interpretive intervention rather than an empirical-results narrative.

• Do the pass: Run the pack as a sequence: fit gate, evidence gate, writing gate, source-map gate, and final output contract; stop when a gate lacks evidence.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against PMLA for literary-field reach, New Literary History for theory/history, Representations for historically grounded cultural analysis; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Stage】topic / positioning / intervention / objects / theory / structure / prose / citations / review / submit / revise
【Format】Article / Critical Response / Review / Special issue
【Route to】ci-<skill>
【Why】one line
【Then】the next skill after that

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — archives, image and text sources, theory shelf, Chicago tooling
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official CI URLs behind every fact in this pack