Loading skill
Install any skill in seconds. Free to start, no credit card required.
Get Started Free →brycewang-stanford/cps-literature-positioning
Use when positioning a Comparative Political Studies (CPS) manuscript against the comparative-politics literature and the rival explanations it must beat. Sharpens the gap and the engaged debate; it does not build the theory or design the study.
Passed 16 of 24 test cases with the skill, and 15 of 24 without it.
and 5 more in the full report
4 fixed12 passed either way5 still failing3 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
One of 4 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
I am writing the literature review paragraph for a comparative politics paper on ethnic mobilization and coalition building in Southeast Asia. I want to avoid creating a citation dump and instead position my argument effectively. Please provide a structured positioning analysis that specifies the target comparative debate, the standing consensus and its limitations, the gap expressed as a clear claim, and the main counter-explanation to adjudicate. Then add a debate map covering units of analysis, time frame, case selection logic, alternative hypotheses, and portability to other world regions, along with two or three comparative reference anchors from outside Asia.
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| The response includes the header 【Gap】. | Missed | Passed |
| The response includes the header 【Next】cps-theory-building. | Missed | Passed |
| The response states the research gap as a falsifiable claim comparing theoretical predictions rather than describing the topic as understudied. | Passed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
A CPS paper earns space by moving a comparative-politics debate, not by citing everything. Position the paper so a comparativist immediately sees the gap, the rival accounts, and what your paper adds. CPS spans several literatures (regimes, institutions, behavior, ethnic politics & conflict, comparative political economy, parties & elections) — engage the right one(s) deeply rather than all shallowly.
cps-research-design) and the theory's contrast class (cps-theory-building).| Subfield | Engage | Common miss |
|---|---|---|
| Democratization & regimes | modernization, elite-bargain, institutionalist accounts | ignoring measurement debates (V-Dem vs. Polity) |
| Comparative political economy | VoC, redistribution, welfare-state, growth-coalition work | treating economics literature as the only frame |
| Ethnic politics & conflict | constructivist vs. primordialist, mobilization, salience | conflating ethnicity with region without theory |
| Parties & elections / behavior | cleavage theory, electoral systems, turnout, vote choice | US-centric framing of a cross-national claim |
Create a short map before writing the literature review:
test cases passed, vs 15 / 24 without
Published skills whose descriptions closely match this one, with their headline benchmark lift.
More skills from the same source and nearby in the registry, with their headline benchmark lift.