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Use when building the conceptual contribution of an Annals of the American Association of Geographers manuscript — turning a finding into a geographic argument grounded in geographic theory (place, scale, space-time, environment-society, spatial process). Sharpens the argument; it does not run analyses.
Passed 19 of 23 test cases with the skill, and 16 of 23 without it.
and 5 more in the full report
5 fixed14 passed either way2 still failing2 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
One of 5 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
We finished analyzing our longitudinal dataset on community-managed forests in Nepal, showing that local governance committees reduced deforestation in mid-altitude hills but had minimal impact in lowland plains. We want to convert these empirical findings into a robust theoretical contribution suitable for the Annals. Please frame this into a formal geographic argument, formatted with clear sections for the key geographic concept, the underlying mechanism driving the pattern, explicit scope conditions for where the claim applies, a portable statement that can be imported by other subfields, and the designated next stage.
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| Categorizes the underlying geographic concept as environment-society | Missed | Passed |
| Uses the portability template structure is best understood as ___ rather than ___, which means | Missed | Passed |
| Specifies aaag-research-design as the next stage | Missed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
An Annals paper is judged on the geographic argument, not only the result. The contribution must do conceptual work with geography's own apparatus — space, place, scale, region, territory, landscape, environment-society relations, spatial process — and be portable enough that other geographers can use it.
Pick the concept the paper actually moves and make it load-bearing:
| Area | What "theory" looks like | The bar |
|---|---|---|
| Methods | a formal/computational claim about geographic inference | generalizes beyond one dataset; states assumptions |
| Human | a social-spatial mechanism or relational concept | engages social theory as geography |
| Nature-Society | a mechanism coupling biophysical and social process | both sides theorized; feedbacks named |
| Physical | a process model / hypothesis about earth-surface behavior | testable, scale-aware, mechanism-explicit |
| General | a cross-area conceptual move | reorders how multiple areas see the topic |
State the contribution as a sentence another geographer could import: "___ is best understood as ___ rather than ___, which means [a different subfield] should expect ___." If the contribution cannot be lifted out of your case, it is a finding, not yet a geographic argument.
test cases passed, vs 16 / 23 without
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