The Astrophysical Journal Letters Agent Skill

Use when targeting The Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL) or deciding whether an astrophysics manuscript fits this rapid short-format…

Context cost
2.1k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 8.3 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
MITthe author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Use when targeting The Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL) or deciding whether an astrophysics manuscript fits this rapid short-format high-impact venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

documentation

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md8.3 kB · preview
--- name: astrophysical-journal-letters ---
6# The Astrophysical Journal Letters (astrophysical-journal-letters)
7
8## Journal positioning
9
10The Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL) is published by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) through IOP Publishing, and it is the rapid, short-format companion to The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ). Its defining character is timeliness paired with importance: ApJL exists to disseminate results of unusual significance, urgency, or general interest more quickly than the full-length journal allows. A paper belongs in ApJL when the result would substantially interest a broad cross-section of astronomers and when speed of publication genuinely matters — a new transient, a first detection, a timely confirmation, or a result that reframes an active debate. Readership is the full AAS community across cosmology, galaxies, stars, exoplanets, the interstellar medium, and high-energy and gravitational-wave astrophysics. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the AAS Journals site.
11
12## When to trigger
13
14- The author names ApJL as the target venue for a short, high-significance astrophysics result that warrants rapid publication.
15- A manuscript reports a timely, broadly important finding — a first detection, a new transient or counterpart, a confirmation of an anticipated signal — and the author is choosing between ApJL, ApJ, and Nature Astronomy.
16- A paper is too short and too urgent for full ApJ treatment but has more general significance than a routine measurement.
17- The author needs ApJL's significance bar, length limits, and desk-reject criteria before submission.
18
19## Scope & topic fit
20
21- Time-critical discoveries: new transients, supernovae, kilonovae, tidal disruption events, fast radio bursts, multi-messenger counterparts where rapid dissemination serves the community.
22- First detections or first measurements: a first spectroscopic confirmation, a first resolved image, a first robust measurement of a predicted quantity.
23- Results that resolve or reframe an active debate across cosmology, galaxy evolution, star formation, the interstellar/intergalactic medium, stellar astrophysics, or exoplanets.
24- Gravitational-wave and high-energy astrophysics results of broad and immediate interest, including multi-messenger associations.
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md1,158 words
Files1
LicenceMIT
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈90
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
1,985
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
1.0%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 10% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

2.1k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Middling. Fine to keep on in a project where you use it weekly, worth unloading in one where you never do.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 8.3 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md8.3 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing. The MIT licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# The Astrophysical Journal Letters · 2.1k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/the-astrophysical-journal-letters" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters ] || { mv .claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/the-astrophysical-journal-letters" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add brycewang-stanford/the-astrophysical-journal-letters

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/the-astrophysical-journal-letters" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/the-astrophysical-journal-letters" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/the-astrophysical-journal-letters/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where. It appears as astrophysical-journal-letters in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, the-astrophysical-journal-letters.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencebrycewang-stanford/the-astrophysical-journal-letters

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

Reviews

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Anybody with an account, one review each. It carries the version that was current when you wrote it, and the publisher may reply once.

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