Update Conclusions

/update-conclusions

The conclusions are downstream of everything. When results change, this is the section most likely to become quietly false, because a conclusion is a claim and claims do not survive changed evidence.

Assume the text was correct once. This is a revision, not a rewrite: what still holds stays exactly as the researcher wrote it.

Before anything else

1. Load the style rules. Invoke paper-writing-style. If absent, use the condensed rules in create-conclusions.
2. Lock the language. Language of the user's first message, whole run. Output LaTeX is English.
3. Read the context. The conclusions, the results and discussion, the introduction, the abstract, the .bib and the citation style. All four sections are needed.

Pick the mode

State the mode before starting.

Where several apply, run B, then C, then A.

Mode A: reconcile with the results

Conclusions fail in one specific way: a claim outliving its evidence. Check each in this order:

1. A claim the results no longer support. The most serious case and the reason this skill exists. Quote the claim, the value it rested on, and the current value. Do not rewrite the claim yourself if the change is substantive; ask the researcher what the new evidence concludes. A conclusion is a scientific claim with their name on it.
2. A value that no longer matches the results section. If it is a plain numerical correction with the claim intact, state the assumption and fix it.
3. The principal result is no longer principal. New or revised data can promote a different finding. Say which finding now looks principal and why, and let the researcher decide.
4. The contribution no longer answers the introduction's gap, usually because the gap was rewritten.
5. A new finding important enough to conclude on that the section does not mention.
6. A claim contradicting the abstract's closing sentences. Report both; the researcher decides which is right.
7. Grandiosity that has become untenable. A weaker result makes a broad claim look worse than it did.

Present as a table: what the conclusions claim, what the results now show, where, and severity.

Never assume the results win. Either the conclusions are stale, or the results changed by mistake.

Mode B: apply suggested updates

Reviewer comments on conclusions cluster tightly:

Then:

1. Enumerate every suggestion as a numbered item, splitting reviewer prose.
2. Classify each: direct, interpretive, conflicting, out of scope.
3. Apply, propose, resolve. A request to soften or strengthen a claim is the researcher's call: propose the wording and let them set the level.
4. Account for every item, including those not applied and why.

Where a request conflicts with the house style, apply it and note the tension. The reviewer outranks the style guide.

Mode C: resume after a pause

1. Label what exists by movement: principal result, interpretation, contribution.
2. Identify what is missing. It is almost always the contribution, which is both the last movement and the hardest to write. Say so directly.
3. Recover what you can from the paper. The principal result and its values come from the results section; the gap the contribution should answer comes from the introduction. Do not ask the researcher to repeat what the manuscript already contains.
4. Ask for the contribution. This one cannot be recovered from the paper: what the field gains is a judgement only the researcher can make. Ask directly rather than proposing something plausible.
5. Check the funnel widens across the join. A resumed conclusions section commonly drops back into experimental detail at the restart point.
6. Match the existing voice, including the tense pattern and the hedging level.

Do not restyle what is already written; suggest /review-conclusions separately.

Produce the revision

Emit the updated conclusions as a LaTeX fragment with movement labels, and:

• Preserve the researcher's wording and claims wherever they still hold.
• Mark each change: % UPDATED: retention now 96\% per Table~2, % ADDED: contribution movement was missing, % FLAG: this claim may no longer follow from the revised data, see note above.
• Keep the section's existing length.
• % TODO: for anything you could not verify or obtain.

Show the fragment, then summarize. Finish by checking whether the abstract's closing sentences now diverge, and suggest /update-abstract if so.

Offer to write it out

Only after approval.

Hard rules

• Never invent or strengthen a claim. If revised data breaks a conclusion, flag it and ask. Writing a replacement claim is inventing science and it carries the researcher's name.
• Never invent the contribution, in any mode.
• Never invent or estimate a value. Every number must match the results section.
• Never emit an em dash. -- only in numeric ranges.
• Never silently drop researcher text, a claim, or a suggestion.
• If the conclusions still follow from the results and there is nothing to apply, say so and change nothing.