Run a Cold Review Panel

Read your own manuscript with reviewers that have never seen the project. The value comes entirely from what they do not know: an author's summary of the work repairs, in the reading, exactly the gaps a reviewer would have fallen into.

The panel is inbound. The manuscript is yours and has not been submitted.

Select one mode

Mode	Responsibility	Read first
isolation-manifest	Construct and prove the reviewers' context, from the filesystem rather than from assertion	references/isolation.md
lens-assignment	Assign the reading lenses and the model families that carry them	references/lenses.md
artifact-execution	Have one reviewer actually run the released artifact and report what happened	references/artifact-execution.md
meta-review	Adjudicate the reports into one decision with prioritised repairs	references/meta-review.md

Resolve the installed skill and components

Resolve SKILL_DIR as the directory containing this SKILL.md. Every runtime resource is below that directory; never resolve through a package parent.

Prove the isolation, do not assert it

A reviewer that has absorbed the project's own framing will reproduce it. The panel is worthless unless each reviewer's inputs are known, and knowing them means constructing them.

Build a review directory containing exactly what a reviewer would receive: the manuscript, the figures, the supplementary material, and the artifact as released. Record the listing of that directory, byte sizes included, as the isolation manifest.

A statement from the reviewer that it has no other context is not evidence. A model's report about its own inputs is a description it generates, not an observation it makes. The directory listing is the observation. Where the runtime permits it, start each reviewer in that directory and nowhere else.

Give the lenses different jobs

Five reviewers reading for the same thing produce one review five times. Assign distinct lenses and keep them separate until adjudication.

Lens	Reads for
Claim support	Whether each stated claim is carried by the evidence offered for it
Method correctness	Whether the procedure could produce the reported number at all
Comparison fairness	Whether the comparators were given a real chance
Reproducibility	Whether the released material lets someone else reach the result
Significance	Whether the result, if entirely true, matters to the stated audience

Carry the lenses across more than one model family where that is available. Two families disagree in different places, and the disagreements are where the manuscript is soft.

One reviewer runs the artifact

At least one lens executes the released material rather than reading about it. Reports that a package installs, that a command exists, or that a script "should" reproduce a figure are not findings. What happened when it was run is a finding.

Record the commands and their output verbatim, including the failures. A panel that never touched the artifact cannot speak to reproducibility, and should say so instead of implying otherwise.

Adjudicate, then prioritise

The meta review is not an average. Adjudicate each finding: confirmed, unsupported, or needing evidence the panel did not have. A finding raised by one lens and missed by four is not thereby weak; a finding raised by all five may still be wrong about the paper.

Order the surviving findings by what a real rejection would rest on, and state for each what change would remove it and what that change costs.

Boundaries

This skill produces a rehearsal, not an acceptance prediction. It cannot see the venue's actual reviewer pool, the committee's calibration, or the competing submissions. It also does not edit the manuscript: repairs are handed back to whoever owns the prose.