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Create Talk

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create-talk

Create Talk is an Agent Skill for documents published in the brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Generate Beamer presentations for the sewage-house-prices project by dispatching the Storyteller agent (creator) and Discussant agent (critic). Supports 4 formats — job market, seminar, short, lightning. Derives all content from the paper.

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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 and paste the prompt below.
  3. Review files and risks before approving any action.
Prompt to paste
Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills/blob/HEAD/skills/41-sticerd-eee-sewage-econometrics-check/skills/create-talk/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/create-talk, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

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

Create Talk

Generate a Beamer presentation by dispatching the Storyteller (creator) and Discussant (critic).

Input: $ARGUMENTS — format name, optionally followed by paper path.


Workflow

Step 1: Parse Arguments

  • Format (required): job-market | seminar | short | lightning
  • Paper path (optional): defaults to docs/overleaf/_main.tex
  • If no format specified, ask the user.

Format Constraints

FormatSlidesDurationContent Scope
Job market40-5045-60 minFull story, all results, mechanism, robustness
Seminar25-3530-45 minMotivation, main result, 2 robustness, conclusion
Short10-1515 minQuestion, method, key result, implication
Lightning3-55 minHook, one result, so-what

Step 2: Launch Storyteller Agent

Delegate to the storyteller agent via Task tool:

Prompt: Create a [format] talk from [paper].
Read the paper (docs/overleaf/_main.tex) and extract:
  - Research question: causal effect of sewage spills on house prices and rents in England
  - Data: EDM (Event Duration Monitoring) spill records 2021-2024+, Land Registry prices, Zoopla rentals
  - Identification strategy: hedonic pricing, repeat sales, long-difference, DiD/event study
  - Spatial matching: spill sites within radius (250m–10km) linked to properties
  - Key treatment variables: spill_count, spill_hrs, n_spill_sites, min_dist
  - Main results and effect sizes (house prices and rents separately)
  - Robustness checks: upstream/downstream, dry spill placebo, rainfall controls
  - Institutional context: England's water companies, EDM permit system, regulatory failure
  - Key figures: output/figures/, docs/overleaf/figures/, docs/overleaf/maps/
Design narrative arc for [format] format.
Build Beamer .tex file with shared preamble if available.
Compile with XeLaTeX.
Save to docs/conferences/[format]_talk.tex

The Storyteller follows these principles:

  • One idea per slide
  • Figures > tables (tables in backup); prefer maps and scatter plots from output/figures/
  • Build tension: motivation (regulatory failure) → question → EDM data → method → findings → policy implications
  • Transition slides between major sections
  • All claims must appear in the paper (single source of truth)
  • Treatment variable definitions (12/24hr counting) explained clearly on methods slide

Step 3: Launch Discussant Agent (Talk Critic)

After Storyteller returns, delegate to the discussant agent:

Prompt: Review the talk at docs/conferences/[format]_talk.tex.
Check 5 categories:
  1. Narrative flow — does the story build properly from EDM data → identification → results?
  2. Visual quality — overflow, readability, consistency
  3. Content fidelity — every claim (coefficient, standard error, N) traceable to paper
  4. Scope for format — right amount of content for duration
  5. Compilation — does it compile cleanly?
Score as advisory (non-blocking).
Save report to docs/conferences/quality_reports/[format]_talk_review.md

Step 4: Fix Critical Issues

If Discussant finds Critical issues (compilation failures, content not in paper):

  1. Re-dispatch Storyteller with specific fixes (max 3 rounds)
  2. Re-run Discussant to verify

Step 5: Present Results

  1. Generated .tex file path
  2. Slide count and format compliance
  3. Discussant score (advisory, non-blocking)
  4. TODO items (missing figures, tables not yet generated)

Output

Save to docs/conferences/[format]_talk.tex (e.g., docs/conferences/seminar_talk.tex). Quality report to docs/conferences/quality_reports/[format]_talk_review.md.


Principles

  • Paper is authoritative. Every claim must appear in docs/overleaf/_main.tex.
  • Less is more. Especially for short and lightning — ruthlessly cut.
  • Audience calibration. Job market = identification rigor. Seminar = interesting result. Lightning = sell the idea.
  • Advisory scoring. Talk scores don't block commits.
  • Worker-critic pairing. Storyteller creates, Discussant critiques. Never skip the review.
  • Figures first. Prefer maps (docs/overleaf/maps/), event study plots, and scatter plots over regression tables.