Paper Ready Checklist

Local CLI checks for AI paper submission and camera-ready LaTeX projects.

It catches the boring but expensive mistakes before upload: leftover TODOs, broken labels, missing figures, unresolved citations, absolute local paths, anonymity leaks, huge figures, and camera-ready placeholders.

_{Image source: public Overleaf homepage screenshot, https://www.overleaf.com/. Used as a visual reference for LaTeX paper-writing workflows; not an endorsement by Overleaf.}

papercheck ./paper --mode submission --output paper-ready-report.md
papercheck ./paper --mode camera-ready --fail-on warning

Why

Most paper repos break at the least interesting moment: the night before ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, AAAI, ACL, SIGGRAPH, or IEEE camera-ready upload. The model is trained, the tables are frozen, the rebuttal is over, and then the final zip still contains a local /Users/... path, an Anonymous Authors block, a missing figures/teaser.pdf, or a duplicated \label{fig:main}.

paper-ready-checklist is a small local guardrail for that final pass.

Features

Check	What it catches
Placeholders	TODO, FIXME, TBD, XXX, ??, placeholder refs/cites
Paths	/Users/..., /home/..., Windows absolute paths
Labels	duplicated labels, refs without matching labels
Bibliography	citation keys missing from .bib, citations without .bib files
Figures	missing files, uncommon extensions, large image files
Submission mode	acknowledgements, \thanks, non-empty author block
Camera-ready mode	Anonymous leftovers
Project shape	missing obvious main .tex, many bibliography files

The output is a Markdown report designed to be pasted into an issue, PR, lab checklist, or release note.

Backup and build-like directories such as _backup*, backup*, .git, build, dist, and out are skipped by default because real paper folders often contain archived TeX copies. Use --include-backups when you want a full forensic scan.

Install

From GitHub:

pipx install git+https://github.com/StaryMoon/paper-ready-checklist.git

For local development:

git clone https://github.com/StaryMoon/paper-ready-checklist.git
cd paper-ready-checklist
python3 -m pip install -e .
papercheck examples/sample_paper --mode submission

No LaTeX distribution is required. The tool scans source files only.

Usage

Check an anonymous submission:

papercheck /path/to/icml-paper --mode submission

Write a report:

papercheck /path/to/paper --mode submission --output report.md

Use a stricter CI gate:

papercheck . --mode camera-ready --fail-on warning

Warn on smaller figures:

papercheck . --max-image-mb 3

Scan archived copies too:

papercheck . --include-backups

Example Report

# Paper Ready Report

- Project: `/path/to/paper`
- Mode: `submission`
- Status: **NEEDS ATTENTION**
- Errors: 2
- Warnings: 7
- Info: 0

## Findings

- **ERROR** `duplicate-label` at `main.tex:24`
  - Duplicate label `fig:teaser` appears 2 times.
  - Hint: Labels must be unique.
- **WARNING** `ack-in-submission` at `.`
  - Acknowledgements usually should be removed for anonymous submission.
  - Hint: Confirm the venue anonymity policy.

See examples/sample_report.md for a generated report.

GitHub Actions

Add a lightweight paper-readiness check to your paper repo:

name: paper-ready

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  check:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: "3.11"
      - run: pip install git+https://github.com/StaryMoon/paper-ready-checklist.git
      - run: papercheck . --mode submission --fail-on error

Modes

submission mode assumes anonymous review and warns about author identity leaks.

camera-ready mode assumes the paper is accepted and warns about anonymous placeholders that should have been restored.

This tool does not replace venue-specific instructions. It is a local sanity check for common paper-project failures.

Roadmap

• optional JSON output for editor integrations
• venue presets for ICML/NeurIPS/ICLR/CVPR/AAAI/ACL
• arXiv packaging checklist
• Overleaf zip audit mode

License

MIT