cover-letter — Claude Code skill: journal letter from a LaTeX paper
Builds a journal submission letter from an existing LaTeX manuscript, then checks every claim in it against what the paper actually says.
npx skills add bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --skill cover-letter -a claude-codeWhat cover-letter does
The skill reads your main.tex and pulls out the title, abstract, contributions and author list. Mode generate turns that into a five-part letter draft shaped by the template for your target venue. Fields it cannot extract stay as placeholders like [Editor name to be confirmed], so the draft never invents a detail. Venues covered by --journal: nature, science, cell, ieee-trans, acm, springer-lncs, neurips, icml, cvpr, generic.
align-check is the reason to install it. Each sentence of the letter gets matched to visible text in the manuscript: inflated novelty, evidence that is missing, numbers that appear nowhere in the paper. Both generate and optimize run this check before returning, and findings are appended rather than hidden.
journal-fit scores four sub-axes (scope, how novelty is framed, evidence density, format compliance) as HIGH, MEDIUM or LOW. presubmission handles declarations, length, opening clichés and banned wording. Output comes back as LaTeX comments tagged [Script] or [LLM], or as structured data with --json. Your files are never overwritten. Only .tex manuscripts work here; Typst sources and reviewer rebuttals are outside its scope. The modes run through uv run python -B $SKILL_DIR/scripts/cover_letter.py, so uv has to be present, and --mode on the command is how you pick one.
What it helps with
- draft a cover letter from a finished paper
- catch claims in the letter that the manuscript cannot back
- judge whether a letter fits a given journal
- check declarations and length before submitting
- reformat a letter for Nature or IEEE templates
Example prompts for the agent
- Write a submission letter from
main.texfor nature - Align
cover_letter.mdwithmain.texand list the gaps - Run the presubmission check on my letter for ieee-trans
How to install cover-letter
1Skills CLI (Vercel)
npx skills add bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --skill cover-letter -a claude-code2Manually: put the files in place
~/.claude/skills/cover-letter/SKILL.mdCopy the whole skill folder; for one project use .claude/skills/cover-letter/
1Skills CLI (Vercel)
npx skills add bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --skill cover-letter -a codex2Manually: put the files in place
.agents/skills/cover-letter/SKILL.mdFor all projects use ~/.agents/skills/
1Skills CLI (Vercel)
npx skills add bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --skill cover-letter -a cursor2Manually: put the files in place
.cursor/skills/cover-letter/SKILL.mdCursor also reads .agents/skills/ and .claude/skills/
1GitHub CLI
gh skill install bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills cover-letter2Manually: put the files in place
.github/skills/cover-letter/SKILL.md1Skills CLI (Vercel)
npx skills add bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --skill cover-letter -a gemini-cli2Platform CLI
gemini skills install https://github.com/bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --path academic-writing-skills/cover-letterManually: put the files in place
.devin/skills/cover-letter/SKILL.mdThe legacy .windsurf/skills/ path still works
Skills CLI (Vercel)
npx skills add bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --skill cover-letter -a opencodeClaude.ai
Zip the folder and upload it in Settings → Capabilities → Skills
Step by step, with commands for each platform: How to install skills in Claude Code: five ways
Questions about cover-letter
How do I install cover-letter in Claude Code?
Run npx skills add bahayonghang/academic-writing-skills --skill cover-letter -a claude-code. The skill then sits at ~/.claude/skills/cover-letter/SKILL.md.
What does cover-letter do?
It drafts and polishes a cover letter for a submission, traces its claims back to the manuscript, rates the fit for a target venue and runs mechanical checks before you send.
Which manuscripts does it accept?
.tex only. Editing main.tex, a full paper review and bibliography lookup belong to other skills in the same collection; job application letters are not handled either.
