Write Abstract

Produce a venue-compliant abstract — right length, right keywords block, five-move structure, verified numbers only — and, when the venue has a separate abstract-registration deadline, the complete registration card (title, abstract, authors, topics, COI list) ready to paste into the submission form.

When to use

• Drafting or rewriting an abstract for a specific venue or template family (acmart / IEEEtran / llncs / NeurIPS-style).
• Fitting an abstract to a word limit, or adding the missing CCS Concepts / Index Terms / keywords block.
• An abstract-registration deadline is approaching and the user must register title + abstract + topics + conflicts before the paper PDF.

Related skills: tailor-to-venue (whole-paper retargeting), parse-cfp (build a missing venue profile), preflight-check (final desk-reject lint), verify-citations (gate for any reference work).

Inputs

• The draft (main .tex preferred — keyword blocks are checked in context) or the abstract as plain text; or, for a fresh draft, the paper's contributions and verified results from the user.
• Venue profile: venues/conferences/<id>.yml or venues/families/<f>.yml (schema: venues/schema.yml). If neither exists, do NOT invent venue facts — run parse-cfp on the CFP URL or quote the live CFP directly.

Process

1. Resolve venue norms, then re-verify (mandatory)

Load the profile (format.abstract_words, format.keywords, deadlines.abstract/paper + timezone, review.blind). Profiles go stale: before the user relies on a word limit, keyword requirement, or any deadline, re-verify it against the live cfp_url and say what was checked and when. If the CFP cannot be fetched, label every profile-derived fact "UNVERIFIED — confirm on CFP". When abstract_words is null, present 150-250 words as a convention, never as a venue rule — see references/venue-norms.md.

2. Draft (or diagnose) with the five-move structure

Build the abstract as motivation → gap → approach → results → impact, with family-appropriate tone and word budget per move: references/abstract-structure.md.

Hard rules while drafting:

• Results numbers come from the draft's evaluation or the user — NEVER invent, round up, or extrapolate. The quantified result is the abstract's single most-predictive surface; the results→impact arc cannot score in the top band without it. If results are pending, leave exactly ONE typed quantified-result slot — a structured contract with metric name, units, sign/direction, and comparison target, e.g. [RESULT: +XX% Recall@20 vs best hashing baseline under matched budget] — never a bare [RESULT: ...] or free-text prose. Any bracketed slot leaves the abstract DRAFT-not-submittable; bind every slot with a verified value before delivery. Contract details: references/abstract-structure.md.
• No \cite, \ref, math, or undefined acronyms in the abstract (it ships as standalone metadata). Any prior work named in prose that needs a citation elsewhere goes through verify-citations.
• At double-blind venues, no identity leaks (institution, grant numbers, "our previous work", personal repo URLs).

For rewrites, run the linter first and let its findings drive the edit.

3. Lint deterministically

Run from the repo root (or pass absolute paths):

python3 skills/write-abstract/scripts/abstract_check.py <main.tex|abstract.txt|-> \
    --venue venues/conferences/<id>.yml [--strict]

Reports length vs the venue limit, keywords-block presence/shape, self-containedness (cite/ref/math/URL/placeholders), the typed quantified-result-slot invariant, the acmart abstract-before-\maketitle gotcha, and lexical move signals. Fix RISK and WARN findings, re-run until RISK-free. --venue also accepts a family profile when no conference profile exists.

The slot gate is non-overridable: the script prints an open-slot count and hard-fails with a non-zero exit whenever any [LABEL: ...] slot remains (independent of --strict), marking the abstract DRAFT-not-submittable. A results-pending draft passes only once its one typed RESULT slot — and any [CONFIRM: ...] slots — are bound with verified values written into the prose. Never satisfy the gate by inventing a number.

4. Generate the keywords block

Pick keywords with the user (problem + technique + domain; mirror the CFP topic list where honest — guidance in references/keywords-blocks.md), then emit the family-correct LaTeX:

python3 skills/write-abstract/scripts/keywords_block.py \
    --venue venues/conferences/<id>.yml --keywords "kw1, kw2, kw3"

For ACM venues the script emits a CCS skeleton whose concept ids MUST be filled from the official tool at https://dl.acm.org/ccs — never fabricate CCSXML concept ids. For NeurIPS-style venues it correctly emits no block (topics live in the submission form).

5. Build the registration card (when there is an abstract deadline)

If deadlines.abstract is set — NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, CVPR, CHI, SIGSPATIAL all register abstracts 2-7 days before the paper — assemble everything the form will ask for:

python3 skills/write-abstract/scripts/abstract_registration.py \
    --venue venues/conferences/<id>.yml --title "<title>" \
    --abstract-file <main.tex|abstract.txt> \
    --authors "Name <email> (Affiliation)" --topics "t1; t2" \
    [--coi-file conflicts.txt] [--track <Track>] [--out abstract-registration-<id>.md]

The card includes the deadline countdown with the venue's timezone (watch for non-AoE venues — SIGSPATIAL is Pacific Time), placeholder-policy warnings (KDD/AAAI penalize dummy abstracts), a COI checklist built from the user's recent co-authors/advisors/institutions, and the submission system URL. Help the user fill the COI list from their actual recent papers; the venue form's window and categories are authoritative. Norms: references/venue-norms.md.

6. Deliver

Present the final abstract (LaTeX + a plain-text form version), the keywords block, the linter's clean report, and — if applicable — write abstract-registration-<venue-id>.md next to the draft. State explicitly that the user registers/submits themselves.

Output

• The abstract in LaTeX and plain text, RISK-free and with zero open slots under abstract_check.py for the target venue (a results-pending draft is delivered explicitly labeled DRAFT-not-submittable until its typed RESULT slot is bound).
• The venue-correct keywords block (or a note that the family has none).
• When the venue registers abstracts: abstract-registration-<venue-id>.md with title, abstract, authors, topics, COI checklist, deadline math, and a verification record.

Guardrails

• Never fabricate results, numbers, or claims for the abstract; unverified values stay as the one typed quantified-result slot (metric, units, sign/direction, comparison target), and the abstract ships labeled DRAFT-not-submittable until every slot is bound from real data.
• Never fabricate citations or CCS concept ids; citations go through verify-citations, CCS ids come from dl.acm.org/ccs only.
• Never state venue limits or deadlines from memory — profile + live-CFP verification only; unverifiable facts are labeled UNVERIFIED.
• Never register, submit, or enter anything into any submission system on the user's behalf; deliverables stop at the card.
• Never paste another paper's abstract text as a template; exemplar study happens transiently via the study-exemplars skill.