Companion to VOICE.md (how a paper sounds) and HAND.md (how code reads): the rubric a finished paper on papers.aesthetic.computer must clear, reverse- engineered from the publishing stack (cli.mjs gates, check-columns.mjs, the .sty layout systems, gen-cover.mjs cover style, and the arxiv-keymaps exemplar). Categories A–G: voice, structure, citations (incl. the ≥30% women / ≥20% non-Western diversity target from the arxiv-diversity audit), figures (the keymaps standard), cover, typography, build/publish hygiene. Flags the two hard tool-enforced gates: the column-overflow check (F8) and a clean, non-stub xelatex build (G1–G2). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>