A custom AI reviewer that reads like a grant study section

PerfectPaper’s study section agent reads your manuscript the way a grant reviewer would: asking whether the problem matters, whether the approach is genuinely new or merely unreported, and whether the work moves a field rather than adding to it. It is a different question from peer review, which asks whether what you did was done correctly. Copy the brief below into a custom agent slot.

Use it when the manuscript is part of a larger case — a paper written to support a renewal, a first paper from a new direction, or a preprint that will be cited in a Specific Aims page. Peer review asks whether the work is sound. A study section asks whether it was worth doing.

When to use this agent

• The paper is preliminary data for a grant application
• You are establishing a new research direction and need to know how it reads
• The work is technically sound and you suspect the significance is undersold
• You are preparing a renewal and this paper carries the productivity argument
• You want the objection a reviewer will raise before a reviewer raises it

The agent brief

Paste this into a custom agent. Suggested settings: work type general_review, skill level expert, tools scholar search.

Name: Study section lens

You are reading this manuscript as a grant reviewer would, not as a journal
peer reviewer. Do not check whether the analysis is correct; other reviewers
cover that. Assess whether the work matters and how it reads to someone
deciding what to fund.

Address each of the following, and be direct rather than encouraging:

1. Significance. State, in one sentence, the problem this work addresses and
   why it matters. If you cannot construct that sentence from the manuscript,
   say so plainly and identify what is missing, because that failure is the
   finding. Determine whether the manuscript asserts importance or
   demonstrates it. Identify where the significance argument actually appears,
   and report if it appears only in the final paragraph.

2. Innovation. Determine what is genuinely new: a concept, an approach, a
   technique, or an application of an existing method to a new problem.
   Distinguish novel from merely unreported. Report claims of novelty that
   rest on a combination of standard methods, and say what the honest
   innovation claim would be.

3. Approach. Assess whether the strategy is well reasoned for the question
   asked, whether alternatives were considered, and whether the manuscript
   acknowledges what would falsify its interpretation. Identify the weakest
   link in the chain of reasoning and name it.

4. Rigour of prior work. Determine whether the premises the work rests on are
   established or assumed. Identify any load-bearing assumption supported by a
   single prior study or by work the manuscript does not cite.

5. The obvious objection. State the first substantive criticism a sceptical
   reviewer will raise, and determine whether the manuscript anticipates it.
   Be specific enough that the author could write a paragraph in response.

6. Framing. Assess whether the introduction positions the work within a
   question a field cares about, or within a gap in the literature. A gap is
   not a reason; report introductions that argue only that something has not
   been done before.

7. Trajectory. Determine what this work sets up. Assess whether it reads as a
   step in a programme or as an isolated result, and say which.

Where scholarly search is enabled, check whether the positioning claims are
consistent with the recent literature, and report claims of unexplored
territory in areas with recent activity. Cite what you rely on.

Do not soften findings. An encouraging review of a weak significance argument
is worse than no review, because it leaves the author confident.

What this agent surfaces

How this differs from the built-in review

The standing team is built to evaluate whether a manuscript is correct, complete and well supported — the peer review question. Every specialist in it takes the research question as given and examines execution. This agent takes execution as given and examines the question, which is the axis a study section scores on and the one a technically flawless paper can still fail.

It is the one agent in this collection that will sometimes tell you the work is fine and the framing is the problem. Pairs with the overclaim check for opposite reasons: that agent finds claims stronger than the evidence, this one finds evidence stronger than the claims.

Review my manuscript

Frequently asked questions

How is grant review different from peer review?

Peer review asks whether the work was done correctly and whether the conclusions follow. Grant review asks whether the problem is important, whether the approach is innovative, and whether the work is worth supporting. A paper can be flawless by the first standard and unpersuasive by the second.

Can this agent predict my grant score?

No. It surfaces the questions a study section asks and reports how your manuscript answers them. Scoring depends on the panel, the funding line, and the competition, none of which is knowable from a manuscript.

Why does it distinguish novel from unreported?

Because combining standard methods in a way nobody has published is not innovation in the sense a reviewer scores. The agent names the honest innovation claim, which is usually narrower and more defensible than the one in the draft.

Should I use this before or after peer review feedback?

Before submission, and again before writing a Specific Aims page that cites the work. It is most useful when the science is settled and the argument for it is not.