Review Cluster — Mid-Draft Adversarial Feedback

Parallel fan-out of a 4-agent read-only core on an active-drafting paper, optionally adding clarity-reviewer as a fifth agent, with auto-synthesise downstream. Lighter than pre-submission-report --parallel; designed for tight iteration, not final-gate verification. Outputs reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md (scope = paper slug from the paper path).

Output Path

Per rules/review-artefact-routing.md (auto-loads in research projects (path-scoped to paper-*/ and paper/)):

• Source slug: review-cluster
• Write reports to: reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD.md (scope = paper slug) inside the project. Path is relative to the research project root, not the Task-Management repo.
• Never at project root (./CRITIC-REPORT.md-style filenames are forbidden — pre-rule layout).
• Idempotency: if today's file exists, append a same-day descriptor ({date}-revision.md, {date}-r2.md, {date}-pre-submission.md) — never overwrite.
• Index policy: the consolidated cluster report is an output-only artefact and receives no Check=review-cluster row. Each active reviewer receives its own row with Trigger=review-cluster.
• Infrastructure repos (Task-Management, atlas-workspace, etc.): this section does not apply — the path-scoped rule won't load there.

Hard Rules

Existential — block output

1. All active sub-agents are read-only. No git, no latexmk, no edits. See subagent-write-guard.md.
2. Auto-synthesise via synthesise-reviews (unless --no-synthesise). Mid-draft work needs an actionable revision plan, not 4 raw reports.
3. Skip if paper isn't compile-ready — run latex first; review on broken builds is misleading. The skill checks compile-status before dispatching.
4. Cluster is for the user's own papers. For external papers, use peer-reviewer agent instead.
5. Prepare one common review input. After compile preflight, invoke review-packet in fresh-review mode unless the user explicitly supplies a verified packet or requests --no-freeze-input. Record the packet archive hash and canonical PDF hash in every reviewer prompt and in the consolidated report. Packet creation itself creates no reviews/INDEX.md verdict row.

Format — catch in review

6. Write one consolidated cluster report at reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md (scope = paper slug), in addition to the required per-agent reports and INDEX rows.
7. Findings tiered M/m/n (Major / moderate / minor) per severity-gradient.md.
8. Show which sub-agent flagged each finding (audit trail for traceability).
9. Clarity on request. With --clarity (or when the paper's prior referee reviews contain readability complaints), add clarity-reviewer as a 5th parallel agent — reader-experience stall map + the 10 clarity diagnostic classes. Its findings join the synthesis like the others.
10. Yardstick continuity on repeat runs. When a prior cluster report exists for the same paper (reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/), the new run reuses the prior run's frozen yardstick — same phase banner (severity-gradient), same rubric set, and the prior findings list passed to the agents as "verify addressedness + new issues only", never a fresh re-derivation of criteria from the revised text (scores across rounds must be comparable; a moved yardstick fakes improvement). If the prior report is unavailable or the user explicitly resets the phase, mark the report [YARDSTICK-REGENERATED: <reason>] under the phase banner. (Ported from ARS v3.19 re-review protocol, 2026-07-24.)

When to Use

• Active drafting: paper compiles, content is taking shape, want adversarial feedback before final polish
• Mid-revision: addressed first round of supervisor comments; want fresh perspective before next pass
• Pre-pre-submission: ~2 weeks before submission, want to surface major issues with time to address
• Before sharing draft with co-authors

When NOT to Use

• Paper is in final pre-submission state — use pre-submission-report --parallel (13 sub-agents, full kitchen sink)
• Paper is in early scaffold (introduction only, no method/results) — review will flag everything as missing
• Reviewing someone else's paper — use peer-reviewer agent
• R&R revision response — use strategic-revision --external instead (genuine venue-comment-driven)

Modes

Architecture

Phase 1 (preflight) → latex compile check + decision-ready manuscript review packet; abort if broken
Phase 2 (dispatch)  → 4 core read-only sub-agents, plus optional clarity-reviewer, in parallel
Phase 3 (math)      → IF theory paper: verify-math on the model section(s) [orchestrator-run skill]
Phase 4 (consolidate) → synthesise-reviews merges (incl. math verdict) → revision plan
Phase 5 (report)    → reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md

The 4-agent core and optional clarity reviewer

Why these four form the default core:

• referee2-reviewer is excluded — it's the final-stage hostile review, used in pre-submission-report. Mid-draft, hostile review pre-empts genuine improvement.
• artifact-coherence-auditor / reproducibility-auditor are excluded — relevant only when the paper is paired with a replication artifact, which is typically a pre-submission concern.
• code-paper-auditor is excluded — a separate code-suite skill exists for code-side review.
• proofread is excluded — editorial issues are too noisy mid-draft; deferred to pre-submission.

Dispatch contract (evidence-grounded findings)

When dispatching the active reviewer set (Phase 2), each prompt MUST carry the evidence clause from _shared/audit-integrity.md: every finding cites path:line (or §section) AND quotes the exact text it is about, verbatim — no quotable anchor, no finding. Phase 4 (synthesise-reviews) spot-verifies a sample and drops anything it cannot ground, so an agent that emits unanchored findings simply loses them. Tell the agents this up front so they anchor everything.

Phase 1: Pre-flight

# Auto-detect paper or use arg
PAPER_PATH="${1:-$(ls -d paper-*/paper 2>/dev/null | head -1)}"
[ -z "$PAPER_PATH" ] && echo "No paper-*/ directory found" && exit 1

# Check compile-readiness — exit if last latex run failed
LATEST_PDF=$(find "$PAPER_PATH/out" -name "*.pdf" -newer "$PAPER_PATH/main.tex" 2>/dev/null | head -1)
if [ -z "$LATEST_PDF" ]; then
    echo "Paper not compiled or stale. Run latex first."
    # the available structured-question mechanism: run latex now, or proceed anyway (risky)?
fi

Phase 2: Dispatch

Construct the active reviewer set as paper-critic, domain-reviewer, claim-verify, and blindspot; append clarity-reviewer when --clarity is set or prior referee reviews contain readability complaints. Launch every active reviewer in a single parallel dispatch. Each gets:

• Read-only with respect to project files under review — Read, Glob, Grep, Bash (read-only commands only) against the paper / code being reviewed; the agent does NOT modify any project source files
• The standard forbid-list from subagent-write-guard.md
• Paper path explicitly named
• Frozen review identity — the common review-packet path, archive SHA-256, and canonical PDF SHA-256. Reviewers may read the project for anchors, but findings must be compatible with that frozen artifact; if live source has drifted, stop and regenerate the packet.

• Output target — two-step, both required:

  1. Write the per-agent report to reviews/<scope>/<source-slug>/<YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM>.md (scope = paper slug, source-slug = agent name like paper-critic; run mkdir -p reviews/<scope>/<source-slug>/ first), then emit the standard stamp directive. The orchestrator-side propagation step appends the durable INDEX row.
  2. Return a structured findings summary to the orchestrator for the Phase 4 consolidate step.

  These two outputs are NOT mutually exclusive. The file under reviews/<source-slug>/ is the durable artefact and triggers the row stamp; the structured return value is the orchestrator's working copy for consolidation. Earlier wording — "not a file write" — was wrong: it suppressed the per-agent logging step and resulted in 0–1 of 4 cluster dispatches stamping a row in INDEX.md. The 2026-05-17 5-agent patch (commit 23ebcfff) made the agent-side intro unconditional; this dispatch-side fix is the orchestrator-side complement.

Wait for every active reviewer. Do not start Phase 4 (consolidate) until all return.

Phase 3: Math verification (theory papers only)

The 4-agent fan-out covers the conceptual math layer (via domain-reviewer, rung R0) but does not run the computational verification rungs. For a theory paper, add a verify-math pass so the algebra/analytic claims are machine-checked, not just read.

Detect a theory paper (any of):

grep -lE '\\begin\{(theorem|proposition|lemma|corollary)\}' "$PAPER_PATH"/**/*.tex 2>/dev/null

If there are no formal environments, skip this phase entirely.

If it IS a theory paper, invoke verify-math (via the skill-routing mechanism) scoped to the section(s) holding the model — it decomposes each proposition into atomic obligations and routes them across the spectrum (R0 conceptual · R1 numerical falsification · R2 symbolic/CAS · R3 Lean). verify-math is a skill, run by this orchestrator in the main session — this is deliberate: the computational rungs (numerical-check, symbolic-check, lean-check) need Bash + sympy/lean, which sub-agents cannot reliably obtain at runtime (the same Bash-grant fragility documented below). The orchestrator always has Bash, so the rungs run here, not inside an agent.

verify-math writes its own aggregate report to reviews/<scope>/verify-math/<YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM>.md and stamps its own INDEX.md row (it is a self-stamping skill, like proofread). Fold its aggregate verdict — and any FALSIFIED obligation — into the Phase 4 synthesis as a high-confidence finding (a machine-falsified claim outranks any single reviewer's concern).

Avoid double-work: domain-reviewer (agent #2) and verify-math's R0 rung both cover the conceptual layer. When this phase runs, tell domain-reviewer in its dispatch prompt that the algebraic identities and comparative-static signs are being machine-verified separately, so it should focus on the conceptual obligations (assumption completeness, citation fidelity, backward logic) rather than re-deriving algebra — see the domain-reviewer "Math R0 Mode" preset.

Phase 4: Consolidate

If --no-synthesise: stop here and show every active reviewer's raw report.

Otherwise, invoke synthesise-reviews with every active reviewer's report as input. Output is a prioritised revision plan with:

• Cross-reviewer agreement (claims raised by ≥2 reviewers — high confidence)
• Single-reviewer claims (medium confidence)
• Blindspot virtues (opportunities, not problems — sometimes the most valuable finding)
• Recommended action queue with priority + estimated effort

Phase 5: Report

Save to reviews/<scope>/review-cluster/YYYY-MM-DD-cluster-report.md (scope = paper slug):

# Review Cluster Report — YYYY-MM-DD

**Paper:** <path>
**Compile status:** <PASS / WARN / FAIL>
**Review packet:** <path, archive SHA-256, canonical PDF SHA-256>
**Reviewers:** <active reviewer set; include clarity-reviewer when requested>

## Summary
- Major issues (M-tier): N
- Moderate (m-tier): N
- Minor (n-tier): N
- Blindspot virtues (opportunities): N

## Cross-reviewer agreement (high confidence)
| Issue | Severity | Flagged by |
|---|---|---|
| ... | M | paper-critic, domain-reviewer |

## Single-reviewer claims (medium confidence)
[Table by severity]

## Blindspot — virtues + missed opportunities
[Items from #4 sub-agent]

## Recommended action queue
1. [Highest-priority]
2. ...

Cross-References

REVIEW-STATE.md propagation (orchestrator-side stamping)

This skill is an orchestrator in the REVIEW-STATE.md schema. As of the 2026-05-19 architecture change, the orchestrator (this skill) handles all stamping; sub-agents emit directives but do not call the helper themselves. Every active reviewer ends its final response with a review-state-stamp fenced block (see the installed shared resource _shared/stamp-directive-spec.md).

Required orchestrator behaviour

When constructing prompts for the active reviewer set, include this line in each:

Emit a review-state-stamp directive at the end of your final response per the installed shared resource _shared/stamp-directive-spec.md. Set trigger: review-cluster (or omit — this orchestrator overrides). Do not call the stamping helper yourself.

After all active reviewers return

For each sub-agent's return:

1. Write the agent's final response to a temp file (/tmp/review-cluster-<agent>.md).
2. Parse the directive:

   ARGS=$(bash <skills-root>/_shared/parse-stamp-directive.sh /tmp/review-cluster-<agent>.md)

   If parse-stamp-directive.sh exits non-zero, log a warning ("Agent X return did not contain a review-state-stamp directive") and continue with the next agent — best-effort.
3. Verify the .md report file exists; reconstruct from return content if missing:

   VERIFY=$(bash <skills-root>/_shared/post-dispatch-verify.sh \
       --return-file /tmp/review-cluster-<agent>.md \
       --project "$PROJECT_ROOT" \
       --agent <agent>)
   # $VERIFY is 'OK <path>' or 'RECONSTRUCTED <path>'.
   # Exit code 10 means reconstruction happened — append a marker to the notes
   # so review-recap shows this row was a recovery, not a real run.

   If VERIFY starts with RECONSTRUCTED, append (report reconstructed by orchestrator — agent skipped Write) to the --notes value before stamping. This guards against the blindspot-class failure mode (agent claims to write but skips the call). See log/2026-05-21-blindspot-write-fix.md.
4. Stamp with the orchestrator's --trigger override (overriding whatever the agent emitted):

   eval bash <skills-root>/_shared/review-state-log.sh "$ARGS" \
       --trigger review-cluster \
       --source agent \
       --project "$PROJECT_ROOT"

5. Clean up the temp file.

Every active reviewer's stamp lands in <project>/reviews/INDEX.md with the same orchestrator name and roughly the same Last Run timestamp, making the cluster visible at a glance. With --clarity, this includes the fifth clarity-reviewer row.

Why the orchestrator stamps (not the sub-agent)

Agents have inconsistent Bash tool grants at runtime (the 2026-05-19 harness investigation showed paper-critic and domain-reviewer self-report Bash unavailable despite YAML grants). The orchestrator always has Bash and always runs after the agents return. Moving stamping here decouples it from agent tool-surface uncertainty.

Schema: the installed shared resource shared/review-state-schema.md. Stamp directive format: the installed shared resource _shared/stamp-directive-spec.md.

Anti-Patterns

• Don't include referee2-reviewer in the cluster — that's the final-stage hostile review, not mid-draft.
• Don't run cluster review on a broken build — phase-1 check should abort.
• Don't auto-apply fixes from the synthesised report — the report is read-only output. User reviews and dispatches edit-agents (per subagent-write-guard.md) separately.
• Don't run cluster review on every save — designed for milestone-driven iteration, not continuous integration.