thedixitjain Critical Inquiry Workflow Router (ci-workflow)
The orchestrator for a Critical Inquiry submission. Figure out the stage and the format, then send the user to the matching skill. CI is interdisciplinary criticism and theory — not a single discipline's house organ — so the router's first job is to make sure the essay is built around a theoretical intervention that matters across fields, not a competent reading with no stakes.
When to trigger
- Starting a new CI essay and unsure where to begin
- Mid-project and unsure which skill applies next
- Deciding among the three formats (Article, Critical Response, Review)
- Returning with a decision letter (route to
ci-revision-and-response)
First question: which format?
| Situation | Format | Route to |
|---|---|---|
| Full original argument, interdisciplinary stakes | Article (≤ 9,500 words) | normal pipeline below |
| Reply to or debate with a published CI piece | Critical Response (≤ 3,000 words) | ci-argument-and-intervention + ci-scholarly-positioning |
| Short notice of a book/exhibition | Review (≤ 500 words) | ci-writing-style + ci-submission |
| A themed cluster of essays | Special issue (editor-proposed) | ci-review-process (proposal route) |
The 9,500-word article cap includes discursive notes and all bibliographical information — plan the notes into the budget from the start (see
ci-writing-style).
Routing map (stage → skill)
Is this a CI-shaped problem? → ci-topic-selection
Whose conversation am I entering? → ci-scholarly-positioning
What is the intervention? → ci-argument-and-intervention
What objects does it read? → ci-evidence-and-objects
Which theory, used how? → ci-theory-and-method
How is the essay built? → ci-structure-and-exposition
Does the prose earn the claim? → ci-writing-style
Notes / images / Chicago style? → ci-citation-and-style
How will it be judged? → ci-review-process
Ready to submit? → ci-submission
Got a decision / revise request? → ci-revision-and-response
Default order
topic-selection → scholarly-positioning → argument-and-intervention → evidence-and-objects → theory-and-method → structure-and-exposition → writing-style → citation-and-style → review-process → submission → revision-and-response
Iterate: most essays loop argument ↔ objects ↔ theory several times before the prose settles.
Symptom → route (when the stage is unclear)
| Symptom in the draft | Actual problem | Route to |
|---|---|---|
| Sentences polished, paragraphs still reorderable | Structure, not prose | ci-structure-and-exposition |
| Readers praise the readings yet ask "so what?" | No intervention yet | ci-argument-and-intervention |
| Theory citations pile up while the claim stalls | Theory as décor | ci-theory-and-method |
| Claim sounds right; nothing on the page earns it | Objects not testing it | ci-evidence-and-objects |
| Word count blown though the body reads lean | Notes eating the cap | ci-citation-and-style |
| Confident essay; only one subfield would care | Fit and framing | ci-topic-selection |
Two routing mistakes to catch early
- Format drift. A Critical Response swelling past ~3,000 words is usually an Article trying to happen — reroute it into the full pipeline; an "Article" whose real content is a quarrel with one published CI piece should shrink into a Response.
- Late-stage gatekeeping. Author-secured permissions, 300 ppi image files, and Chicago-note
discipline are pipeline stages, not submission-day chores; route image-heavy essays through
ci-citation-and-styleearly — rights can outlast a decision.
Anti-patterns
- Treating CI like a single-discipline journal — the intervention must travel across fields
- A survey or literature review with no claim of its own (CI wants an intervention, not a digest)
- Theory used as decoration rather than as an instrument that does work on an object
- Skipping image permissions and Chicago-note discipline until the end
Router pass for Critical Inquiry
Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the object, theoretical stakes, interpretive turn, and permission/citation discipline; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: humanities reviewers who expect a strong interpretive intervention rather than an empirical-results narrative.
- Do the pass: Run the pack as a sequence: fit gate, evidence gate, writing gate, source-map gate, and final output contract; stop when a gate lacks evidence.
- Return a ledger: give
claim / evidence / risk / manuscript locationrows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue. - Sibling guard: compare against PMLA for literary-field reach, New Literary History for theory/history, Representations for historically grounded cultural analysis; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
- Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's
resources/official-source-map.mdhas been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.
Output format
【Stage】topic / positioning / intervention / objects / theory / structure / prose / citations / review / submit / revise
【Format】Article / Critical Response / Review / Special issue
【Route to】ci-<skill>
【Why】one line
【Then】the next skill after that
Supplementary resources
../../resources/external_tools.md— archives, image and text sources, theory shelf, Chicago tooling../../resources/official-source-map.md— official CI URLs behind every fact in this pack
Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → Critical-Inquiry-Skills/skills/ci-workflow/SKILL.md