---
name: paper-read-along
description: Walk a paper paragraph by paragraph — original, translation, then a note on what it means. Run when asked to translate a paper or a section, read it beside the original, or get stuck on a passage that will not parse.
---

A read-along: the paper's own units in order, each followed by its translation and, where it earns the line, a note on what it means. **Meaning only** — whether the paper is any good belongs to the `three-pass-read` skill.

## Ground rules

- **Full text or stop.** Obtain the paper's full text (PDF, HTML, or plain text) before starting. When you cannot, ask the user for the file and wait: an abstract plus recall is not a paper.
- **Source-tag every claim.** Each statement about the paper carries `§4.2`, `Fig. 3`, or `Table 1`. Where the paper is silent, write `Paper does not state`.
- **Follow the user's language.** Write prose in the language the user is writing in. Keep technical terms, quoted phrases, source tags, and the structural headings below in their original form, so files stay mergeable across sessions.

## Steps

1. **Fix the scope and the unit.** Whole paper by default; the user may name sections (`§3-4`). Paragraph is the default unit; switch to sentence when the user asks for it. Say back the range and unit you settled on.
2. **Number every unit** off the paper's own structure — `§3.2-¶4`. Equations, figure captions, table captions, and footnotes each take a number of their own rather than folding into a neighbouring paragraph.
3. **Emit in order**, one block per unit, original first:

```
§3.2-¶4
> <original text, verbatim>

<translation>

▸ <note>
```

4. **Notes carry meaning.** What a symbol stands for, which premise the sentence leaves implicit, what a term means in this paper specifically, why one step follows from the previous one. Leave a unit un-noted when the translation already carries it.
5. **Work one section per turn** on a paper too long for a single response. End the turn with that section's count, then open the next turn at the next unit number in sequence. Sections stay whole: a section begins and ends inside one turn.
6. **Count at the end of each section**: `Source units: N · Emitted: N`.

Write to `papers/<firstauthor><year>-<slug>-read-along.md`, appending section by section, or to the conversation where writing files is unavailable.

## Done when

- Every unit number in the requested range appears in the output, in order, with none skipped.
- Every block carries the original above its translation.
- Each section's closing count matches its source count.