A pre-submission reader for high-stakes writing. It runs one pass over a draft, returns a structured scorecard, and stops. It diagnoses; it does not compose.
The informal review layer is unevenly distributed. Some writers have a colleague who will read a draft or a mentor who will mark up a dossier. Most do not. First Reader is the pass that happens before a human reviewer's time is spent, so that scarce expert attention goes to judgment rather than to mechanics.
Written · Accepted · Published · Funded
A genre-independent core supplies the trust model, the precautions, and the module ledger. Each genre pack supplies the standard, the checks, and the definition of a target venue, and packs combine: a journal viewpoint manuscript gates into Proof for the journal's requirements and runs Friction's standard for the argument.
Thesis contestability, standing, claim-to-source fidelity, overclaims, and the questions a hostile reader asks first.
Required statements, abstract-versus-body consistency, causal language, statistical completeness, and reporting-guideline conformance.
Built against funders' published review criteria.
Narrative-versus-CV consistency, built only against an institution's actual supplied criteria.
First Reader is in active development. If you write op-eds, manuscripts, grants, or dossiers and want to be an early reader of the reader, get in touch: [email protected].