Limitations Scope Writer

Write limitations and scope as claim-boundary control. This skill helps the paper acknowledge real constraints, explain their impact, and preserve the valid contribution.

Use this skill for:

• drafting limitations sections
• writing scope statements and failure-case paragraphs
• calibrating conclusion caveats
• turning negative or mixed results into honest boundaries
• writing ethics, broader impact, and deployment caveats when required
• reducing overclaiming without weakening supported claims

Do not use this skill for hostile review. Use paper-reviewer-simulator for reviewer critique. Use experiment-story-writer for mixed-result results prose. Use paper-writing-memory-manager to propagate scope changes to title, abstract, intro, results, captions, and conclusion. Use paper-draft-consistency-editor for full-draft consistency.

Skill Directory Layout

<installed-skill-dir>/
├── SKILL.md
├── references/
│   ├── limitation-patterns.md
│   └── ethics-and-scope.md
└── templates/
    └── limitations-scope-plan.md

Progressive Loading

• Always read references/limitation-patterns.md.
• Read references/ethics-and-scope.md when writing ethics, broader impact, deployment caveats, data/model risks, or human-subject/domain caveats.
• Use templates/limitations-scope-plan.md when creating paper/.agent/limitations-scope-plan.md.
• Read local paper/.agent/writing-contract.md, paper/.agent/writing-memory/, paper/.agent/paper-evidence-board.md, paper/.agent/experiment-story-plan.md, paper/.agent/provisional-results.md, review-risk notes, and current draft sections when present.

Core Principles

• A limitation should define the boundary of the claim, not apologize for the paper existing.
• Be specific about affected settings, assumptions, data, metrics, compute, users, or deployment contexts.
• Pair each limitation with its consequence for interpretation.
• Do not bury limitations that contradict a main claim; narrow the claim or route to diagnosis.
• Do not invent mitigations, future work, or ethics safeguards that the project does not support.
• Scope language should appear wherever the paper might otherwise overclaim: abstract, intro, results, limitations, and conclusion.
• Limitations should be consistent with the evidence board and writing contract.

Step 1 - Build Scope Snapshot

Extract:

## Limitations Scope Snapshot
- Target venue:
- Paper archetype:
- Main claims:
- Supported scope:
- Known limitations:
- Failure cases:
- Mixed or negative results:
- Dataset/benchmark constraints:
- Compute/system constraints:
- Human/domain/deployment risks:
- Ethics or broader-impact requirements:
- Claims needing downgrade:

If a limitation undermines the primary claim, route to result-diagnosis, paper-positioning-planner, or paper-evidence-board before writing final text.

Step 2 - Classify Limitations

Read references/limitation-patterns.md and classify each limitation:

• data or benchmark scope
• model or method assumption
• metric or evaluation scope
• compute or scale constraint
• generalization boundary
• failure mode
• human/domain/deployment constraint
• theoretical assumption
• artifact or reproducibility constraint

For each limitation, decide whether it requires:

• local wording only
• claim downgrade
• new experiment
• related-work repositioning
• ethics/broader-impact text
• reviewer-risk follow-up

Step 3 - Create Scope Plan

Create or update:

paper/.agent/limitations-scope-plan.md

If there is no paper/ directory and the current directory is the paper repo, save to:

.agent/limitations-scope-plan.md

Use templates/limitations-scope-plan.md.

For each limitation, record:

• affected claim
• evidence source
• wording consequence
• paper locations needing scope language

Step 4 - Draft or Revise Limitation Text

For each limitation paragraph:

• state the limitation concretely
• identify the affected scope
• explain how it changes interpretation
• preserve what the paper still establishes
• optionally name a realistic future direction

Avoid vague phrases such as "more work is needed" unless the needed work is specified.

Step 5 - Propagate Scope

Limitations often require edits outside the limitations section. Check:

• title
• abstract
• contribution bullets
• introduction claims
• result interpretation
• captions
• conclusion

If a scope correction affects top-level prose, route to abstract-title-contribution-writer or paper-draft-consistency-editor.

Step 6 - Final Checks

Before finalizing:

• limitations are specific and evidence-grounded
• no limitation silently contradicts the main claim
• scope language appears in all high-risk locations
• failure cases are explained rather than hidden
• ethics/broader-impact text does not overpromise safeguards
• future work is realistic and not used to cover missing required evidence
• reviewer-risk follow-ups are explicit
• scope and limitation changes are written back through paper-writing-memory-manager