Content Refinement Agent (Step 5)

Faithful implementation of the Content Refinement Agent from PaperOrchestra (Song et al., 2026, arXiv:2604.05018, §4 Step 5, App. F.1 pp. 49–51).

Cost: ~5–7 LLM calls (App. B), typically ~3 refinement iterations, each consisting of one reviewer call and one revision call.

The paper highlights this step as one of the largest contributors to overall quality: refinement alone accounts for +19% (CVPR) and +22% (ICLR) absolute acceptance-rate improvement (Fig. 4). Get this step right.

Inputs

• workspace/drafts/paper.tex — output of Step 4
• workspace/inputs/conference_guidelines.md
• workspace/inputs/experimental_log.md — used as ground truth for the hallucination check
• workspace/citation_pool.json / workspace/refs.bib — the allowed bibliography

Outputs

• workspace/refinement/iter1/, iter2/, iter3/ — per-iteration snapshots containing paper.tex, paper.pdf, review.json, score.json
• workspace/refinement/worklog.json — append-only history of decisions
• workspace/final/paper.tex and workspace/final/paper.pdf — copy of the best accepted snapshot

The refinement loop

prev_score = score(paper.tex)                  # baseline from initial draft
snapshot iter0/

for iter in 1..ITER_CAP (default 3):
    1. simulate_review(paper.tex) → review.json
       (uses `references/reviewer-rubric.md` rubric)

    2. apply_revision(paper.tex, review.json) → new_paper.tex
       (uses verbatim Refinement Agent prompt at `references/prompt.md`)

    3. snapshot iter<N>/ with new_paper.tex, review.json
       latexmk -pdf new_paper.tex → iter<N>/paper.pdf

    4. score(new_paper.tex) → curr_score

    5. decide via score_delta.py:
       - if curr.overall > prev.overall:                       ACCEPT
       - elif curr.overall == prev.overall and net_subaxis ≥0: ACCEPT
       - else:                                                 REVERT

    6. apply_worklog.py to append the decision

    7. if REVERT or no actionable weaknesses or iter == ITER_CAP: HALT

    paper.tex ← new_paper.tex   (only on ACCEPT)
    prev_score ← curr_score

cp <best iter>/paper.tex → workspace/final/paper.tex

The "best" snapshot at HALT is the one with the highest accepted overall score. On a REVERT halt, the best is the iteration immediately before the revert.

Step-by-step

0. Pre-refinement integrity gate

Before snapshotting or scoring the initial draft, run the AI failure modes gate:

Load references/ai-failure-modes.md (which points to skills/shared/ai_failure_modes.md). Run all 7 checks against the draft and the inputs. This gate runs once only, at the start of iteration 1.

• CONFIRMED failure → write HALT entry to worklog.json, report to user, stop.
• SUSPECTED failure → add WARNING comment to paper.tex, log in worklog.json, continue.
• No failures → proceed.

0b. Snapshot the initial draft

python skills/content-refinement-agent/scripts/snapshot.py \
    --src workspace/drafts/paper.tex \
    --dst workspace/refinement/iter0/

This creates iter0/paper.tex. Then compile to iter0/paper.pdf:

cd workspace/refinement/iter0/ && latexmk -pdf -interaction=nonstopmode paper.tex

Score it (see Step 1 below) → iter0/score.json.

1. Simulate peer review

For each iteration N starting from 1:

Writing quality pre-check (start of every iteration): Load references/writing-quality-check.md and run the 5-category checklist (Categories A–E) against the current draft. Note violations and add them to the revision agenda.

Load references/reviewer-rubric.md as the system prompt for the simulated reviewer call. The reviewer reads iter<N-1>/paper.pdf (or paper.tex if your host LLM lacks PDF input) and produces a JSON of strengths, weaknesses, questions, and per-axis scores.

The rubric is structured to mimic AgentReview (Jin et al., 2024) — the paper's chosen evaluator. We ship a faithful rubric in the references directory; the host agent's LLM does the actual reviewing.

Devil's Advocate reviewer: One simulated reviewer must be designated the DA following references/da-reviewer.md. The DA challenges core claims from first principles (causal overclaiming, ablation coverage, baseline fairness, generalization claims, novelty inflation) rather than surface polish. If the DA issues a CRITICAL finding that remains unaddressed after all reviewers weigh in, that finding blocks the "refinement accepted" decision regardless of rubric scores. Log DA CRITICAL findings in worklog.json: {da_critical: true, finding: "..."}.

Save to workspace/refinement/iter<N>/review.json.

2. Score the draft

The reviewer call produces both qualitative feedback and a per-axis score:

{
  "axis_scores": {
    "scientific_depth":     {"score": 65, "justification": "..."},
    "technical_execution":  {"score": 70, "justification": "..."},
    "logical_flow":         {"score": 60, "justification": "..."},
    "writing_clarity":      {"score": 55, "justification": "..."},
    "evidence_presentation":{"score": 72, "justification": "..."},
    "academic_style":       {"score": 68, "justification": "..."}
  },
  "overall_score": 64.5,
  "strengths": [...],
  "weaknesses": [...],
  "questions": [...]
}

Save to iter<N>/score.json. (Combined with review.json if your host emits one document; the schemas overlap.)

3. Apply revision

Load the verbatim Content Refinement Agent prompt at references/prompt.md. Prepend the Anti-Leakage Prompt. Inputs:

• paper.tex — current draft
• paper.pdf — compiled PDF (multimodal context if available)
• conference_guidelines.md
• experimental_log.md — ground truth for numeric claims
• worklog.json — history of previous changes
• citation_pool.json — the allowed bibliography
• reviewer_feedback — the JSON from Step 1

The prompt instructs the model to address weaknesses, integrate question answers, and emit two output blocks:

1. A worklog JSON {addressed_weaknesses[], integrated_answers[], actions_taken[]}
2. The full revised LaTeX code

Save the revised LaTeX as iter<N>/paper.tex. Append the worklog JSON to workspace/refinement/worklog.json via apply_worklog.py.

4. Compile and re-score

cd workspace/refinement/iter<N>/ && latexmk -pdf -interaction=nonstopmode paper.tex

Then re-run the simulated review on the new draft → updated score.json for the new iteration. (This is the "re-score after revision" call.)

5. Apply the accept/revert decision

The calling loop must track CONSECUTIVE_SMALL (starts at 0) and pass it on each call so score_delta.py can detect the plateau:

python skills/content-refinement-agent/scripts/score_delta.py \
    --prev workspace/refinement/iter<N-1>/score.json \
    --curr workspace/refinement/iter<N>/score.json \
    --plateau-threshold 1.0 \
    --plateau-streak 3 \
    --consecutive-small $CONSECUTIVE_SMALL \
    > workspace/refinement/iter<N>/delta.json

EXIT=$?
# Update streak for next iteration:
CONSECUTIVE_SMALL=$(python3 -c "
import json
d = json.load(open('workspace/refinement/iter<N>/delta.json'))
print(d['consecutive_small'])
")

Exit codes:

• 0 — ACCEPT (overall improved or tied with non-negative net sub-axis, no plateau)
• 1 — REVERT (overall decreased)
• 2 — REVERT (tied overall, but net sub-axis change negative)
• 4 — HALT_PLATEAU (accepted but N consecutive iterations below threshold — stop early)

Behavior:

• ACCEPT (exit 0): keep iter<N>/paper.tex as the new best. Continue to iter N+1.
• REVERT (exit 1 or 2): copy iter<N-1>/paper.tex back as canonical, halt.
• HALT_PLATEAU (exit 4): keep current (it was accepted), but stop — further iterations are unlikely to yield meaningful gains. In practice ~85% of refinement gain comes in iteration 1; the plateau fires when subsequent iterations improve by less than 1 point for 3 consecutive rounds.

Always log the decision via `apply_wor