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ase-author-response

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Use when drafting ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering) author responses, covering the double-anonymous rebuttal that must first survive the early-rejection gate and — distinctively — the criteria-bound revision-round summary-of-changes that maps every stated revision criterion to a concrete change and is re-checked against those criteria.

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How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy the prompt below and paste it into your agent.
  3. Review the proposed files and risks before you approve installation.
Prompt to paste
I want to install this Agent Skill for this project in Codex.

Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills/blob/HEAD/ASE-Skills/skills/ase-author-response/SKILL.md

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Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use. Codex skill guide

ASE Author Response

Use this after ASE reviews are released. ASE has two distinct speaking turns, and conflating them is a common mistake: a short rebuttal (for papers that survive the early-rejection gate), and — if you receive a Revision — a summary-of-changes accompanying a revised paper that is re-checked against the reviewers' explicitly stated criteria. Both must respect double-anonymity: no author names, institutions, or revealed repository ownership, even to strengthen a point.

Triage (both turns)

  • Answer what affects the decision: significance and soundness of the automation, evaluation quality on real subjects, threats to validity, clarity, and the Data Availability / artifact posture.
  • Use evidence that already exists or that the revision will concretely add — never a vague promise.
  • Correct factual misreadings first; a reviewer who misread your tool's configuration or a table is often persuadable.
  • Keep every word anonymous. Do not name your tool's real name, institution, grant, or a private repository.

Turn 1 — the rebuttal (only if you survived early rejection)

If your paper reached the rebuttal stage, at least one reviewer saw value; a uniformly negative set would have been early-rejected. So the rebuttal's job is narrow: move the borderline reviewer.

  • Short and decision-focused. One decision-critical point per reviewer beats an exhaustive reply.
  • Concede what is true, correct what is misread, and point to exactly where the answer lives in the submitted paper or artifact.
  • Do not paste large new results the reviewers cannot verify; if a small, checkable number answers a direct question ("what is the runtime overhead?"), give it.
  • Signal what you would do in a revision, because Revision is a live outcome — but do not promise a redesign you cannot deliver in the window.

Turn 2 — the revision summary-of-changes (the distinctive ASE move)

A Revision is criteria-bound: the reviewers wrote concrete, actionable criteria and agreed to accept in principle if they are met. The summary-of-changes is a criterion ledger: for every stated criterion, either meet it and show where, or explain precisely why it is infeasible and what you did instead.

[C1] Criterion (quoted): "Add a comparison against tool X on the same subjects."
     -> Action: DONE  | added §5.3, Table 4: X run with an equal, documented budget on all 90 subjects
     -> Where: §5.3, Table 4; artifact/eval/compare_X.sh
[C2] Criterion: "Report an ablation isolating the learned component."
     -> Action: DONE  | §5.4, Table 5 replaces learned templates with static rewrites
[C3] Criterion: "Evaluate on an industrial code base."
     -> Action: INFEASIBLE (with reason) | no license to redistribute proprietary subjects; added
        an open large-scale subject instead (§5.5) and noted the residual external-validity threat

The rule that turns a Revision into an acceptance: address every criterion. A criterion that is neither met nor explicitly and reasonably addressed is what the re-check punishes — the discussion lead maps your summary-of-changes back onto the criteria one by one.

Reviewer pushback patterns (automated-SE flavored)

PushbackWhat it signalsASE-ready response
"The baseline tool is not tuned/fair"Soundness doubt about the comparisonRe-run with an equal, documented budget; report new numbers, or justify the setup
"Evaluated only on toy or self-selected subjects"External-validity limitAdd real subject systems, or scope the claim and name the threat
"The improvement is the model, not your design"Model-as-contribution doubtAdd the ablation isolating the automation from the model; report marginal value
"The tool/artifact does not run"Reproducibility / availability gapFix and re-anonymize; describe the run path and re-execution oracle in the response
"Overlaps prior automation X"Novelty/delta doubtSharpen the delta sentence; add the missing head-to-head comparison

Anonymity in the response (easy to slip)

  • Refer to your own prior work in the third person, as in the paper.
  • Describe tool/artifact changes without linking to an identity-revealing repository; use the anonymized location.
  • Do not thank a named collaborator or funder inside the response or the summary-of-changes.

Calibration

  • Respond to the criterion the reviewer actually raised, not the one you would rather defend.
  • Length and format norms for both turns vary by cycle; confirm the current instructions before sending.
  • The PC discussion (and, for a Revision, the re-check against the stated criteria) decides; write the response as evidence for an advocate, and make the revised paper — not the letter — carry the argument.

Output format

[Turn] rebuttal / revision summary-of-changes
[Priority issue] <reviewer concern or stated criterion>
[Decision dimension] significance / soundness / evaluation / threats / clarity / data-availability
[Criterion ledger] <criterion -> DONE/PARTIAL/INFEASIBLE + where in paper/artifact>
[Anonymity check] <no identity leak in the response: passed/issues>