Teach From Paper
Convert one research paper into a ready-to-build teaching package: a lecture outline, a shortlist of teachable results with the intuition spelled out, a slide skeleton, discussion questions, and an exercise brief. The deliverable is an outline and a brief — not a finished deck; the slide skeleton is shaped to hand straight to /create-lecture, and the exercise brief to /scaffold-exercises.
When to use
- You have a paper (PDF,
.tex,.md) and a slot to teach it — a lecture, a reading group, a job-market practice talk. - You want the teachable core extracted and pitched to a level, not a generic summary.
- You're prepping the plan for a deck and want
/create-lectureto do the drafting.
Not for: literature surveys across many papers (use /lit-review); refereeing the paper's correctness (use /review-paper); drafting the actual Beamer slides (use /create-lecture).
Inputs
$0— path to the paper.
| Format | How to read it |
|---|---|
.tex, .qmd, .md, .txt | Read directly with the Read tool. |
.pdf | TMP=$(mktemp -d)/paper.txt && pdftotext "$0" "$TMP" (poppler-utils), then Read/Grep "$TMP". |
If extraction fails or the tool is missing, ask the user for a plain-text version and stop. A scanned or partly scanned PDF extracts with exit 0 and blank pages, so also compare pdfinfo "$0" | grep Pages with the pages that returned text (awk 'BEGIN{RS="\f"} NF{n++} END{print n+0}' "$TMP"); read any blank pages directly with Read, or ask for a text version, and if you go on without them, say which pages were not read. When you are done, delete the extracted copy (rm -rf "$(dirname "$TMP")"): it is a plaintext copy of the document. The full paper goes in the context window (1M) — read it end-to-end before extracting; do not skim the abstract and guess.
Phases
Phase 0: Read the Paper + Set Audience Level (Pre-Flight Report)
Read the paper start to finish. Then resolve the audience level and time budget — from --level / --minutes if given, otherwise ask once. Echo a Pre-Flight Report before extracting:
markdown## Pre-Flight Report **Paper:** [title, authors, year] **One-line thesis:** [the paper's central claim in your words] **Audience level:** undergrad | phd | seminar (drives notation depth + which proofs survive) **Time budget:** N minutes (~N/2 slides) **Prerequisites assumed:** [concepts students must already have] **Running example candidate:** [the paper's application that can thread the lecture]
Get a nod on level + thesis, then proceed. Level governs everything downstream: undergrad keeps intuition and drops proofs; phd keeps the identifying assumptions and one key derivation; seminar foregrounds the contribution-vs-literature framing.
Phase 1: Extract the Teachable Core + Intuition
- Identify the paper's 3-5 results worth presenting — not every proposition, the ones a student should leave remembering. Prefer the headline result, the identifying assumption that makes it credible, and one surprise or limitation.
- For each, capture: the formal statement (trimmed to the audience level), the intuition (why it's true in one breath, no algebra), and the failure mode (when it breaks).
- Map the paper's notation to something teachable; flag any symbol clash a student would trip on.
- Separate method (how they get the result) from takeaway (what we now believe) — students conflate these; the lecture must not.
Phase 2: Build the Lecture Outline + Slide Skeleton
Produce a motivation → setup → key result → method → takeaways arc, then a slide skeleton matching the time budget (~2 min/slide). Each skeleton entry is a title + one-line content note + figure/diagram placeholder — enough for /create-lecture to draft from, no prose. Honor the project's pedagogy invariants in shape: motivation before formalism, a worked example near each definition, a transition slide at each act break.
Phase 3: Discussion Questions + Exercise Brief
- Write 4-6 discussion questions graded by depth: comprehension → application → critique ("where would this identification fail?"). Pitch to the level.
- Write an exercise brief — 2-4 problems sketched (prompt + what skill it drills + expected-answer shape), NOT full solutions. This is the hand-off to
/scaffold-exercises, which fleshes out problems, data, and answer keys. Skip if--no-exercises.
Output / Report format
Write to quality_reports/teach_from_paper_[sanitized-title].md:
markdown# Teaching Package: [Paper Title] **Audience:** [level] · **Budget:** [N min] · **Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD] ## 1. Lecture Outline Motivation → Setup → Key Result → Method → Takeaways (one line each) ## 2. Results Worth Presenting ### R1 — [name] - **Statement:** … · **Intuition:** … · **Breaks when:** … [R2..R5] ## 3. Slide Skeleton (→ /create-lecture) | # | Title | Content note | Figure/diagram | ## 4. Discussion Questions 1. [comprehension] … 5. [critique] … ## 5. Exercise Brief (→ /scaffold-exercises) - **E1:** [prompt] — drills [skill] — answer shape: [form]
Exit behavior
- Present the package in chat and confirm the file path written.
- Name the two hand-offs explicitly: "Slide skeleton ready — run
/create-lecture [Topic]. Exercise brief ready — run/scaffold-exercises." - If the audience level was never confirmed, do not ship — a deck pitched at the wrong level is wasted work. Halt and ask.
Flags
--level—undergrad|phd|seminar. Sets notation depth, which proofs survive, and question difficulty. Asked interactively if omitted.--minutes— target lecture length; the slide count is roughly--minutes/2.--no-exercises— skip Phase 3's exercise brief (keep discussion questions).
Cross-references
/create-lecture— consumes the Phase 2 slide skeleton to draft the actual Beamer deck. See.claude/skills/create-lecture/SKILL.md./review-paper— referee the paper's correctness before teaching it if you're unsure the result holds. See.claude/skills/review-paper/SKILL.md./lit-review— for situating the paper among many, rather than teaching one deeply. See.claude/skills/lit-review/SKILL.md.- The exercise brief (written in Phase 3; section 5 of the output) is the input contract for
/scaffold-exercises, which fleshes out problem sets; this skill stops at the brief.
What this skill does NOT do
- Does not draft finished slides — that's
/create-lecture. The slide skeleton is an outline, not Beamer. - Does not write full problem-set solutions — the exercise brief is a sketch for
/scaffold-exercises. - Does not verify the paper is correct — pair with
/review-paperif the result's validity is in doubt. - Does not read multiple papers or survey a field — one paper in, one teaching package out.
