Supplement Writing

Supplement / appendix (master method)

Follow supplement-guide.md in this folder, the complete plain-English method. This file is the operating summary.

Process

1. Treat the supplement as an evidence locker. It is the box of physical evidence, prompts, learned code, traces, protocols, costs, where a skeptic audits and a reimplementer rebuilds. Across the seven dissected appendices, verbatim artifacts average well over half the pages; additional experiments average under 5%. Never use the appendix to keep arguing.
2. Order prose first, exhibits last. Implementation details, protocol, baselines, compute, then the gallery: code listings, the trace, the prompt gallery last and longest.
3. Keep exhibits verbatim. Stub bodies, debug prints, the model's own comments, ragged wrapping, all kept; the credibility comes precisely from not tidying. Disclose any curation or abridgment in the caption.
4. Wire everything. Every supplement section is pointed at from the main text by an inline payload-naming reference ("Appendix D shows example false positives"), and re-anchors to the main text in its first sentences. No orphaned sections or floats.
5. Build the honesty devices. They are structural, not rhetorical: a NAMED failure section with verbatim specimens tied to a main-text rate; full-population galleries ("no example is dropped") over samples; curation disclosures; a scope disclaimer after every proof; a fairness sentence per baseline; a compute block with hours, hardware, and cost.
6. Choreograph any theory beat. Intuition -> definitions and claim restated verbatim from the main text -> named proof outline -> proofs -> scope disclaimer -> pointer to the adjacent measurement.
7. Close with a software map when the supplement stands alone: concepts to source files, figures to generating scripts, runnable commands.

Core rules

• The supplement audits existing claims; it introduces no new headline claims or rankings absent from the main paper.
• One reading legend, stated once before the first exhibit; one functional gloss (bold run-in, one sentence) per exhibit.
• Compared prompts print in full, adjacent, with the single delta highlighted, the ablation becomes visually auditable.
• One artifact shown COMPLETELY (a full learned program beats five excerpts); one qualitative trace with epistemic color-coding and failure annotations.
• Standalone supplements get a roadmap sentence, a Contents, an S-prefixed float series, and their own bibliography; attached appendices continue the main text's numbering.
• Captions keep full house discipline (the caption-writing skill applies); most published appendices let captions collapse, do not imitate that.
• Beware \ref{sec:...} under document classes with secnumdepth=0: it renders empty. Refer to appendix sections by name; figure/table/listing refs are fine.
• One notation per object, matching the main paper exactly; unify any split on touch and flag the choice.
• Prose axioms: sentences <= ~28 words, subject and verb early, zero "can"/"could", no bare This/These, numbers glued to exact objects, semicolons rationed.

Reference file

• supplement-guide.md: full guide: term translations, the evidence-locker rule, three supplement recipes with fill-in templates, the devices recipe (prompt gallery, trace, learned-code exhibit, theory beat, protocol and compute block, wiring), mechanical checklists including the "never in a supplement" list, and the assembly order.