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name: grant-writing description: "Plan, draft, or review grant and fellowship applications. Exclude manuscript work and career materials outside a funding application." license: MIT metadata: author: jjfroehlich version: "0.1.1"

Grant Writing

Purpose

Help users turn a funding opportunity and proposal draft into a reviewer-readable, funder-fit, feasible application with clear aims and concrete scoring evidence.

Use this skill when

Use this skill for grant or fellowship applications, specific aims pages, research strategies, project summaries, significance/innovation/approach sections, feasibility and risk reviews, budget-deliverability checks, resubmission planning, and interview preparation for funding mechanisms.

Do not use this skill when

• The task is about manuscript peer review responses.
• The task is about journal cover letters or article submission, not funding.
• The task is general scientific prose editing without a funding context.
• The task is about career materials unless they are part of a funding application.

Core workflow

1. Scope the preflight to the deliverable. For whole applications, planning, or readiness judgments, identify the funder, mechanism, required sections, review criteria, audience breadth, deadline, available proposal text, review-team availability, and time left for critique. For a local edit, inspect the supplied text and constraints and identify only missing information that could change that edit.
2. Run the full funder-fit, compliance, schedule, and internal-review preflight only for whole-application planning or submission readiness. For local edits, use the supplied constraints and flag only a consequential compliance uncertainty.
3. For narrative or structural work, make the objective, premise, payoff, approach, and applicant fit visible. For local prose edits, preserve meaning and supplied constraints.
4. Review significance, innovation, aims, feasibility, budget, risks, and alternatives only where they bear on the requested section or readiness judgment.
5. Return prioritized edits, not generic encouragement: what to move, cut, relabel, evidence, reframe, or verify against the call.

Reference routing

• Open references/funder-fit-and-compliance.md when scope, eligibility, instructions, templates, assessor criteria, or submission readiness matter.
• Open references/grant-narrative.md when the central story, objective, premise, section order, or proposal coherence is weak.
• Open references/specific-aims.md when aims, dependencies, overview figures, approach blocks, or aim-level feasibility are central.
• Open references/significance-innovation-approach.md when significance, innovation, impact, DEI, ambition, or approach rationale need work.
• Open references/reviewer-perspective.md when the draft needs panel readability, skim tests, non-specialist framing, reader feedback, or interview preparation.
• Open references/budget-and-feasibility.md when budget, preliminary data, applicant capacity, risk, alternatives, or future-work integrity are at issue.
• Open references/award-start-and-conditions.md when an application decision or planned handoff raises award conditions, authorization, or readiness to begin. Keep financial and legal decisions with the responsible institution.
• Open references/handbook-access.md when a fuller explanation or worked example would help with the current task.

Output formats

Select only the format that fits the requested deliverable; these are patterns, not mandatory response sections.

• Proposal triage memo with funder-fit, reviewer-risk, and next edits.
• Specific aims revision plan.
• Section-level rewrite guidance for significance, innovation, or approach.
• Feasibility and risk audit.
• Readiness checklist with pass/fail items, review timeline, and fixes.
• Template or table for premise, aims, budget, risk-return, or reviewer doubts.

Quick checklist

Apply only the checks relevant to the requested scope and artifact. Inspect supplied context first; treat identify or clarify as analysis when the answer is already available, and ask only for missing information that could change the result.

• Is the opportunity a real fit, and are current instructions reflected in the draft?
• Can a reviewer find the objective, premise, significance, innovation, approach, and feasibility evidence quickly?
• Are aims understandable and their dependencies assessable for this scheme and development stage, with appropriate evidence, qualification milestones, or decision gates?
• Are risks named with alternatives, rather than hidden?
• Do figures, headings, topic sentences, and emphasis let a busy reviewer recover the proposal logic?

Common pitfalls

• Polishing an out-of-scope or noncompliant proposal.
• Burying the objective under background.
• Blurring significance, innovation, and approach into one enthusiasm section.
• Treating preliminary data, CV, budget, impact, or DEI as boilerplate rather than scoring evidence.
• Calling execution gaps "high risk" without a credible development or access plan.
• Adding pilot findings, secured access, or institutional commitments that the user has not supplied.

Quality bar

• Ground advice in the user's funder, mechanism, review criteria, and draft text when available.
• Translate reviewer expectations into concrete edits or checks.
• Check the current call when a compliance question could change the requested work; a local wording edit does not require a full call review.
• Distinguish completed evidence, planned work, unresolved feasibility, selection, spending authority, and technical readiness. A rewrite must preserve their status.
• Avoid generic encouragement unless it is attached to a specific revision action.