Outline

Core Rule

A section is not a topic — it is one claim the manuscript must establish, plus the evidence that establishes it. Outline by claim, not by heading. Every section in the plan answers: what disputable point does this establish, and what evidence (cited or our own) supports it? If a section's claim has no evidence in the library, the outline says so — it does not paper over the gap with a heading. You cannot outline to a thesis you have not read, and you must never assume a source exists to fill a slot.

The output is structured to drop into MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md → Structure so the plan-of-record and the outline are the same artifact.

When to Use

Invoke with /outline when:

• Starting a manuscript — you have a thesis and a target venue and need a section plan.
• The argument has drifted and you need to re-derive the structure from the thesis.
• Adding a major section and want it to carry exactly one claim with a budget.
• Before drafting any section, to confirm the evidence exists before you write around it.

If the thesis is not yet one sentence, stop and sharpen it first — an outline built on a fuzzy thesis inherits the fuzziness.

Process

Phase 1: Lock the Thesis and Contribution

1. Read MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md — the Thesis (one sentence), Contribution, Audience, target venue. If the Thesis is still a <placeholder>, the manuscript is not ready to outline — surface that and ask the author for the one-sentence claim.
2. Restate the thesis as a claim a reader could dispute. "A paper about agent reliability" is a topic; "A deterministic verification gate reduces hallucinated tool calls in LLM agents without lowering task completion" is a claim. The whole outline serves this sentence.
3. State the contribution delta — what the reader knows after this paper that they did not before, distinguished from prior work. Every section either builds toward this delta or is off-thesis.

Phase 2: Read the Venue's Shape

1. Target venue conventions — from MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md and (if it exists) the field overlay in agent_docs/field/. IMRaD is the default, but venues vary: some merge Results+Discussion, some want a structured abstract, some cap sections. Note length and display-item limits.
2. Audience calibration — what the readership already knows (skip it) vs. what must be established (cite it). This decides how much the Introduction must do. A specialist methods venue needs less background than a broad-readership journal.

Phase 3: Derive Sections from the Argument

For a standard IMRaD manuscript, assign each section the one claim it establishes:

Adapt to the venue's actual structure — but every section still owes exactly one claim. If a section owes two, split it; if two sections owe the same claim, merge them.

Phase 4: Attach Evidence and Budgets

For each section, specify:

1. Evidence needed — the specific support for its claim:
   • Cited — which references establish it. Check they exist in references.bib. Name the keys.
   • Our own — which result/figure/table/data (cross-ref MANUSCRIPT_MAP → Figures & tables).
   • Common knowledge — what needs no cite for this audience.
2. Word budget — a number that keeps the section from sprawling. Budgets sum toward the venue's length limit. Use texcount for live counts later; estimate here (CLAUDE.md → Model vs Code — counting is deterministic, don't guess once drafting starts).
3. Evidence status — for each piece of cited evidence: in library / MISSING. A claim whose support is not in references.bib + sources/ gets a GAP flag. Do not assume a source exists — if you cannot point to it, it is missing.

Phase 5: Flag Gaps — Never Fabricate to Fill Them

The most valuable outline output: what evidence the argument needs that the library does not have.

• For every section whose claim depends on a source not in the library, emit a GAP: the claim, the kind of source needed, and where to look. This is honest scaffolding ([CITE] in spirit), not a fabricated citation.
• If the thesis depends on a claim with no available evidence at all, say so plainly — that may mean the thesis is not yet supportable, which the author needs to know before drafting, not after.

Phase 6: Emit the Outline for MANUSCRIPT_MAP

Produce the outline in the MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md → Structure table shape plus a per-section claim+evidence block and a consolidated gap list. Do not overwrite MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md unless the author asks — present the outline for them to merge.

Output Format

# Outline — <manuscript title>
> Target venue: ACL (~8 pages + unlimited appendix, numbered style)
> Thesis: A deterministic verification gate reduces hallucinated tool calls in LLM agents without lowering task completion.
> Contribution: first study of pre-execution verification gating for agent tool calls; prior work is single-turn QA only.

## Structure (drops into MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md)
| Section | File | Claim it establishes | Budget | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract | sections/abstract.tex | whole argument in 200 w | 200 w | not started |
| Introduction | sections/intro.tex | hallucinated tool calls in multi-turn agents are understudied; we close the gap | 800 w | not started |
| Methods | sections/methods.tex | reproducible account of the verification gate + evaluation | 1500 w | not started |
| Results | sections/results.tex | tool-call accuracy by task horizon (data only) | 1200 w | not started |
| Discussion | sections/discussion.tex | interpretation, limits, implications | 1500 w | not started |
| Conclusion | sections/conclusion.tex | contribution restated, future work | 300 w | not started |

## Section detail
### Introduction — "hallucinated tool calls in multi-turn agents are understudied; we close the gap" (800 w)
- Evidence (cited): hallucination prevalence/context — `halluc2022` (in library); the
  tool-use baseline is single-turn QA only — `tooluse2023` (in library, do NOT overclaim as multi-turn agentic).
- Evidence (ours): the contribution statement.
- GAP: need a source establishing that *multi-turn agentic* tool-call hallucination
  specifically is understudied. Nothing in references.bib covers this. → search recent reviews;
  leave [CITE] until found. Do not assert "no prior work" without it.

### Results — "tool-call accuracy by task horizon" (1200 w)
- Evidence (ours): Tab:toolacc (by task horizon), Fig:horizon. Confirm both exist.
- No citations — observations only. No causal language here (that's Discussion).

[... one block per section ...]

## Evidence Gaps (fill before drafting the dependent section)
1. **[Intro]** "multi-turn tool-call hallucination understudied" — no supporting review in library. (blocks the gap framing)
2. **[Discussion]** horizon-scaling mechanism — no mechanistic source. (blocks interpretation ¶2)
3. **[Methods]** citation for the agent harness — not in references.bib.

## Off-thesis (parked → MANUSCRIPT_MAP → Not Now)
- Latency cost of the gate vs post-hoc self-correction — interesting, but not what the thesis defends.

Pairs With

• MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md — the outline's Structure block is authored for this file; keep them in sync.
• /journal-fit — run first or alongside to confirm the venue shape (length, structure, style) the outline must obey.
• /claim-check — after drafting a section, verify the claims the outline promised are the claims actually made (and supported).
• agent_docs/writing-workflow.md — the full outline template and the Question→Evidence→Draft→Verify→Cite loop this skill front-loads.
• block-fabrication.sh — if you try to satisfy a GAP by writing a stub reference, this blocks it. The GAP stays a GAP until a real source fills it.

Common Rationalizations

Notes

• Outlining is argument architecture — run on the Reasoner model (CLAUDE.md → Model Selection).
• A GAP is not a failure of the outline; it is the outline doing its job — telling you what to source before you write.
• Keep off-thesis ideas in Not Now, not smuggled into a section. Scope discipline starts at the outline.