Venue Templates

Venue Templates is a skill from K-Dense's Claude Scientific Writer (MIT) for preparing journal manuscripts, conference papers, research posters, and grant documents. Earlier descriptions sold it as a big template library. Version 1.2 (reviewed 2026-07-20) is deliberately narrower: it treats venue rules as time-sensitive, makes you check the official source first, and ships only a small, explicitly labeled set of scaffolds.

Key Features

• Mandatory currency rule: before quoting page limits, deadlines, style-file names, or anonymity rules, the agent must identify the exact venue, year, track, and article type, open the official author instructions or funding call, and record the URL and date checked. It must never guess a style-file name by changing the year.
• Bundled scaffolds: a generic Nature-oriented article (not an official Nature template), a PLOS ONE-oriented scaffold, a NeurIPS 2026 wrapper that needs the official neurips_2026.sty, three Elsevier elsarticle examples, an NSF narrative planning scaffold, a one-page NIH Specific Aims scaffold, and a venue-agnostic beamerposter.
• Style guides: reference notes on writing for Nature and Science, Cell Press, medical journals, ML and computer-vision conferences, ACL/EMNLP/CHI, and on reviewer expectations and rebuttals.
• Helper scripts: query_template.py lists what is actually bundled, customize_template.py copies a scaffold with title and authors filled in, and validate_format.py checks a PDF's page count and embedded fonts.

Use Cases

• Writing a compliance note (venue, official URL, date, limits, anonymity) before drafting.
• Starting a NeurIPS or Elsevier paper from the right scaffold.
• Checking a final PDF against a page limit you confirmed from the official call.

Pricing and Access

Free and MIT-licensed. The scripts need Python 3.11+. LaTeX and Poppler tools are optional, for compiling and inspecting PDFs.

Getting Started

1. Install the plugin in Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/claude-scientific-writer, then /plugin install claude-scientific-writer.
2. List assets with python scripts/query_template.py --list-all.
3. Validate a PDF: python scripts/validate_format.py --file paper.pdf --venue icml-2026 --content-pages 8 --check page-count,fonts.

Limitation: the validator cannot prove margins, font sizes, excluded sections, or hidden metadata comply, and --content-pages must be counted by the official rule. Grant forms such as biosketches belong in agency systems, not LaTeX.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the bundled files official templates?

Mostly no. Each file is labeled as a scaffold or an official example, and the skill tells the agent to download the official kit whenever a venue provides one.

Does it know this year's page limits?

It carries dated snapshots only. The workflow requires checking the live official source every time.

Alternatives

• LaTeX Posters Skill: deeper poster layout guidance with three LaTeX packages.
• Scientific Writing Skill: the manuscript drafting and evidence workflow itself.
• Research Grants Skill: narrative strategy for NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA, and NSTC proposals.

Conclusion

Use Venue Templates as a compliance checklist and scaffold kit, not as a source of truth for rules. Its main value is forcing a recorded check of the official instructions before you format anything. More research skills are in the skills hub.