Cover Letter

Core Rule

A cover letter is an honest, calibrated pitch to the editor, not a sales sheet. It states what the paper contributes, why that fits this venue, and why it matters — using only what the manuscript actually establishes. Never assert significance the paper does not establish. "First study of X" is allowed only if the manuscript defends it; "a major advance," "dramatically outperforms," or a invented effect size is overclaim, and overclaim in the cover letter is the editor's first signal to distrust the paper.

Every number in the letter (tool-call accuracy, task-success delta, sample size) comes from the manuscript's own reported results — never your prior, never rounded up. If the manuscript flags a quantity as [VALUE — verify], the letter does not quote it; it waits. The letter is downstream of the science, never ahead of it.

This skill drafts the letter. It does not change the thesis, the contribution, or any reported quantity — those are Protected Claims (CLAUDE.md → Protected Claims).

When to Use

Invoke with /cover-letter when:

• A manuscript is submission-ready and the venue requires a cover letter to the editor.
• Resubmitting after rejection elsewhere, or submitting a revision that needs a fresh letter.
• You want the contribution and fit argument stated tightly before the final push.

State the venue if it differs from the map: /cover-letter NeurIPS. Otherwise read it from MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md → Target journal.

Process

Phase 1: Pull the Argument from MANUSCRIPT_MAP

1. Read MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md — Thesis, Contribution, Target journal (and handling editor if recorded), Audience, and the headline result. The letter is a compression of these; it introduces nothing not already in the map or the manuscript.
2. Extract the one-sentence contribution — what the paper establishes that was not established before. Example: "a pre-execution verification gate reduces hallucinated tool calls in multi-turn LLM agents." Keep it to what the results support.
3. Pull the headline number from the manuscript's reported results, with its scope intact ("on our benchmark," "in our sample"). Do not invent one and do not strengthen the scope.
4. Identify required declarations for the venue — conflicts of interest, prior/concurrent submission, data and code availability, ethics/dual-use where applicable, funding. If the map does not record these, ask the author rather than guessing.

Phase 2: Draft the Letter

Keep it to roughly one page, in this order:

1. Salutation — the named editor if known; "Dear Editor" otherwise. Get the venue name and editor exactly right (a wrong journal name is a desk-reject signal).
2. Submission sentence — title, article type, target venue.
3. Contribution (significance) — one short paragraph: the problem, what the paper does, and the headline finding as the manuscript states it. Calibrate every verb — "reduces ... in our evaluation," not "solves."
4. Fit to scope — one or two sentences naming why this belongs in this venue and reaches its readership (the agents/tool-use community at NeurIPS/ACL, for instance). Reason from the venue's stated aims; do not invent an acceptance rate or impact factor to argue fit.
5. Required declarations — conflicts, prior-submission status, data/code availability, funding/ethics as the venue requires. State each plainly; if a fact is unknown, mark it [CONFIRM with author], never assert it.
6. Reviewers — suggested or opposed reviewers only if the user asks. Do not volunteer names; if asked, the author supplies them — do not invent affiliations or emails.
7. Close — corresponding author and contact.

Phase 3: Calibrate Every Claim

Before output, run each sentence through the cardinal rule (CLAUDE.md → Source-Grounded Writing):

• Significance check — does the manuscript actually establish each significance claim? Downgrade anything it does not: "advances" → "contributes," "proves" → "provides evidence that," "outperforms" → "outperforms on our benchmark."
• Number check — every quantity traces to the manuscript's reported results, with scope. No rounding up, no invented deltas.
• Novelty check — a "first to ..." claim is defensible only if the paper defends it; otherwise soften to "to our knowledge."
• Declaration check — no required declaration is silently omitted; no unknown fact is asserted.

Output Format

# Cover Letter — <manuscript> → NeurIPS
> Source: MANUSCRIPT_MAP (thesis, contribution, headline result) + venue aims.
> Every quantity below is the manuscript's own reported value; nothing strengthened.

Dear Dr. <Editor> [CONFIRM name],

We submit our manuscript, "A Pre-Execution Verification Gate Reduces Hallucinated
Tool Calls in Multi-Turn LLM Agents," as a full research paper for consideration
at NeurIPS.

Multi-turn LLM agents frequently issue tool calls to functions that do not exist or
with malformed arguments; this failure is well documented for single-turn use
[halluc2022] but understudied across multi-step horizons. We introduce a lightweight
gate that validates each proposed call against the tool schema before execution. On
our benchmark, the gate improves tool-call accuracy and task-success rate relative to
an ungated baseline [report the manuscript's exact figures — do not invent]. The
method is model-agnostic and adds negligible latency.

This work fits NeurIPS's scope in agents and tool use, and addresses a deployment
concern — fewer invalid tool calls — of direct interest to that readership.

Declarations: The authors declare no competing interests [CONFIRM]. This manuscript
is not under consideration elsewhere [CONFIRM]. Code and the benchmark are available
at <repo> [CONFIRM / mark "available on request" if not yet public].

Sincerely,
<Corresponding author>, <affiliation>, <email>


## Pre-send checklist
- [ ] Venue name and editor spelled correctly (NeurIPS; editor confirmed).
- [ ] Every significance claim is one the manuscript establishes — no "major advance" / "solves."
- [ ] Every number matches the manuscript's reported results, with scope ("on our benchmark").
- [ ] No quantity quoted that is still [VALUE — verify] in the draft.
- [ ] Required declarations present: conflicts, prior submission, data/code, funding/ethics.
- [ ] Reviewer suggestions included only because the author asked; names supplied by the author.
- [ ] Title matches the manuscript title exactly.

Pairs With

• MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md — the single source for thesis, contribution, venue, and the headline result; the letter is its compression.
• /journal-fit — run first; the fit verdict and scope reasoning feed the "fit to scope" paragraph. If fit is Weak, fix that before writing the letter.
• /abstract — the abstract and the cover letter share the contribution and headline number; keep them consistent (same calibrated claim, same scope).

Common Rationalizations

Notes

• The letter is judgment about framing and calibration — draft on the Reasoner model (CLAUDE.md → Model Selection); the editor reads tone as a proxy for rigor.
• Changing the contribution or a reported quantity to make the letter punchier is a Protected Claim — stop and ask the author; do not edit the science to fit the pitch.
• One page, honest, calibrated. A cover letter that overclaims invites the skeptical read; one that states the contribution plainly earns the fair one.