Outline Agent (Step 1)

Faithful implementation of the Outline Agent from PaperOrchestra (Song et al., 2026, arXiv:2604.05018, App. F.1, pp. 40, 44).

Cost: 1 LLM call.

Your task

Read four input files from the workspace and produce a single JSON object at workspace/outline.json with three top-level keys:

• plotting_plan, array of figure objects
• intro_related_work_plan, object with introduction_strategy and related_work_strategy
• section_plan, array of section objects, each with section_title and subsections[]

How to do it

1. Read the verbatim prompt at references/prompt.md. This is the exact Outline Agent system prompt from the paper. Use it as your system message.

2. Prepend the Anti-Leakage Prompt from ../paper-orchestra/references/anti-leakage-prompt.md.

3. Read the four input files:

   • workspace/inputs/idea.md
   • workspace/inputs/experimental_log.md
   • workspace/inputs/template.tex
   • workspace/inputs/conference_guidelines.md

4. Synthesize across all four, the global instruction in the prompt is "Do not analyze inputs in isolation. You must synthesize information across all provided documents for every step."

5. Emit a single JSON object following the schema in references/outline-schema.md. Cross-check against references/outline_schema.json (machine-readable).

6. Save to workspace/outline.json.

7. Validate:

   python skills/outline-agent/scripts/validate_outline.py workspace/outline.json
   

   If validation fails, fix the JSON and re-validate. Do not proceed to Step 2 or Step 3 with an invalid outline, every downstream agent depends on this schema.

8. Append §1 to research_brief.md (see skills/shared/research_brief_template.md):

   After outline.json passes validation, append the §1 section to workspace/research_brief.md (create the file if absent). Template: