The Quality Rubric for AC Papers #

What a finished paper on papers.aesthetic.computer has to clear before it counts as done. This is the companion to VOICE.md (how a paper sounds) and HAND.md (how code reads) — this file is how a paper is built and checked. It was reverse-engineered from the publishing stack itself: cli.mjs, tools/check-columns.mjs, the three .sty files, bin/gen-cover.mjs, and the figure-rich exemplar arxiv-keymaps/keymaps.tex. When the tooling and this doc disagree, the tooling wins — fix this file.

The exemplar to hold a flagship paper against is arxiv-keymaps. When in doubt, open it.

Two of these gates are enforced by tools today; everything else is enforced by reading the paper next to keymaps. The two hard gates are flagged [HARD].

A — Voice & argument (`VOICE.md`) #

A1 First person, plain. "i built this," not "the author implemented." Grep the .tex for we propose, the authors, it should be noted, a novel approach to, in this paper we → zero hits.
A2 Conviction, quiet but absolute. The conclusion states a belief plainly. No "results suggest potential viability."
A3 Em dashes for asides, short sentences, fragments that land. ---, not semicolon or parenthesis chains.
A4 Cite when it matters, never to prove you read things. No paragraph is a bare pile of \citep{}.
A5 The register gradient holds: abstract formal-ish but ends on a line that lands; intro opens on the thing, not a lit survey; body is whiteboard-precise; limitations say what's broken before anyone asks; conclusion is yours.
A6 One source file for cards + arxiv. Never maintain divergent content across formats.

B — Structure #

B1 Abstract in a \begin{quote}…\textbf{Abstract.} block after the title. One dense paragraph, lands on its last line.
B2 Introduction names the object first — often "Figure 1 is…" — and ends with a one-line roadmap of the movements to come.
B3 Numbered body sections carry \label{sec:…} and cross-reference each other by label.
B4 A limitations pass, or an honest counter-case, that argues against the paper's own favored object at least once — without minimizing or dramatizing.
B5 Conclusion restates the contribution and the belief.
B6 \section*{Acknowledgments} when there's a residency or venue context, with the pals badge.

C — Citations #

C1 natbib + plainnat. Every .bib entry is actually \cited; every \cite resolves. Build shows no "undefined citation."
C2 Load-bearing citations are real and read — the theoretical anchor is cited repeatedly, not name-dropped once.
C3 Diversity is a quality axis, not an afterthought. The house target from the arxiv-diversity audit: ≥30% women authors, ≥20% non-Western authors. A cluster of citations that is all-male or all-Western is a defect to fix before publishing, the same as a broken build. Verify each new citation's metadata against a primary source — guessed page numbers and years are how wrong citations ship.
C4 Prefer the platter reading corpus (system/public/assets/papers/ readings/) as the scholarly foundation where it fits.

D — Figures (the keymaps standard) #

Keymaps carries 7 figures (2 full-width figure*), 2 tables, and 28 QR tiles. A flagship paper is expected to show its argument, not just state it.

D1 Real figures built from the argument — hand-built TikZ diagrams, or captured screenshots of the actual thing under discussion (a UI, a piece, a real user comment) — not decorative filler.
D2 Wide content spans both columns via figure*[t] / table*[p].
D3 Captions are dense and explanatory. A caption says what to read and what it proves. "Figure 1: the system" fails.
D4 Where the paper catalogs external objects, each resolves to a canonical home via a \qrc{} QR tile.
D5 Inline micro-glyphs (\key{}, keycap chips, etc.) used consistently when they aid reading.
D6 Screenshots are legitimate evidence: the coarse UI being criticized, the AC piece being praised, the user comment proving demand. Caption them like exhibits — say what the reader is looking at and why it is in the paper.

E — Cover (`bin/gen-cover.mjs`) #

E1 A hand-rendered emblem on cream paper (colored pencil + gouache, silkscreen imperfection) generated by gen-cover.mjs (OpenAI gpt-image-2). Reads like a record-label seal or a band-tee print.
E2 ONE singular subject, floating in the central two-thirds, periphery dissolving to bare paper. No frame, no border, no background scene, no clusters.
E3 Never spell the subject's name. Identity is carried by emblem, silhouette, color, era.
E4 Muted natural palette, square 1:1.
E5 Prompt lives at figures/cover-prompt.txt; output figures/cover.png.
E6 Included in the title block at width=0.5–0.7\textwidth, centered.
E7 The cover feeds the index tile (genCoverTile); a paper with a figures/cover.png gets a designed tile instead of a page-1 render.

F — Typography & layout #

F1 \documentclass[10pt,letterpaper,twocolumn]{article}, % !TEX program = xelatex. (Essays use ac-paper-essay.sty; cards use ac-paper-cards.sty.)
F2 Geometry 0.75in margins, folio clear of the sheet edge.
F3 Body is Latin Modern (Roman/Sans/Mono, mono Scale=0.85). YWFT Processing (\acbold/\aclight) is reserved for the title and header only — its punctuation glyphs are unreliable in body text.
F4 AC palette exact: acpink 180,72,135 · acpurple 120,80,180 · acdark 64,56,74 · acgray 119,119,119. Diagram chips (acgreen/etc.) allowed.
F5 \section = bold, normalsize, UPPERCASE, \thesection., tight spacing.
F6 hyperref links colored acpurple; xurl loaded; pdftitle/pdfauthor set.
F7 Long identifiers/paths wrap via a \code{}-style command so they never overflow. Two-column breaking tuned (\tolerance, \emergencystretch, \hyphenpenalty). Use \raggedbottom so short paragraphs don't get their inter-paragraph glue stretched into false "title" spacing.
F8 [HARD] Nothing may break the columnar arrangement. node papers/cli.mjs check reports zero Overfull \hbox > 0.5pt. This is the rule: nothing ships that breaks the columns.
F9 Title block: \acbold title in acdark, cover, italic subtitle in acpink, byline @jeffrey · Aesthetic.Computer · ORCID 0009-0007-4460-4913, language bar, then a pink rule. Every dot in "Aesthetic.Computer" is the pink \acdot.

G — Build & publish hygiene (`cli.mjs`) #

G1 [HARD] Build is xelatex 3-pass + bibtex (xelatex; bibtex; xelatex; xelatex). Success = a real PDF exists, not exit code.
G2 [HARD] No silent failure: the .log contains no ! Package fontspec Error and no nullfont. A stub PDF from a font fallback is a broken build even though xelatex exits 0.
G3 Deterministic PDFs: SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH from newest source mtime. Same bytes in → same bytes out (this is what keeps the oven from auto-commit loops).
G4 Version stamp: \InputIfFileExists{version} pulls \paperhash (git short hash, + if the paper dir is dirty) and \paperrev, with a dev/? fallback, rendered in a colophon badge.
G5 History stamp: \InputIfFileExists{history} renders an in-PDF changelog from the git log of the paper's own .tex.
G6 Draft watermark on by default (45° pink "WORKING DRAFT" + the "Working Draft — not for citation" header). A print edition turns it off.
G7 Registered in PAPER_MAP: { base, siteName, title }, siteName ending -26-arxiv (or -essay / -deck / -dossier-26-arxiv).
G8 In exactly one CATEGORIES lane (platform / essays / audits / decks / dossiers / software). Uncategorized triggers a WARN.
G9 Has an IMPORTANCE rank (missing → 99, sinks to the bottom of the index).
G10 metadata.json entry with a real created date; revisions increments on each publish.
G11 Thumbnail generated in thumbs/{siteName}.jpg (cover tile preferred).
G12 Index + Atom feed regenerated; verify reports zero broken PDF links.
G13 PAPER_COPY entry with a detail line and an abstract for the index card and the feed.
G14 Optional lanes if present: cards ({base}-cards.tex), translations (da/es/zh/ja/ru), a PODCASTS reading.

The review pass (run this before calling a paper done) #

Voice — grep the banned phrases (A1); the conclusion states a belief (A2, B5).
Structure — abstract-quote, object-first intro with roadmap, honest limitations, conclusion, acknowledgments (B1–B6).
Citations — every entry cited and resolving; metadata verified against primary sources; ≥30% women / ≥20% non-Western (C1–C3).
Figures — real diagrams and captured exhibits with dense captions; wide ones as figure*; QR tiles resolve (D1–D6).
Cover — single emblem, cream paper, no name, 1:1; included at 0.5–0.7\textwidth (E1–E6).
Layout — 10pt twocolumn, Latin Modern body + ywft title, palette exact, node papers/cli.mjs check = 0 overflows (F1–F9).
Build/publish — xelatex 3-pass+bibtex clean, .log free of fontspec Error/nullfont, watermark on for drafts, registered in PAPER_MAP / CATEGORIES / IMPORTANCE / PAPER_COPY / metadata.json, thumbnail + feed
- no broken links (G1–G13).

The teeth today are F8 and G1–G2 — the column check and a clean, non-stub xelatex build. Everything else is enforced by holding the paper up next to keymaps and being honest about the difference.

Maintained alongside VOICE.md. Update this when the tooling changes.