Critical Inquiry Workflow Router (ci-workflow)

The orchestrator for a Critical Inquiry submission. Figure out the stage and the format, then send the user to the matching skill. CI is interdisciplinary criticism and theory — not a single discipline's house organ — so the router's first job is to make sure the essay is built around a theoretical intervention that matters across fields, not a competent reading with no stakes.

When to trigger

• Starting a new CI essay and unsure where to begin
• Mid-project and unsure which skill applies next
• Deciding among the three formats (Article, Critical Response, Review)
• Returning with a decision letter (route to ci-revision-and-response)

First question: which format?

The 9,500-word article cap includes discursive notes and all bibliographical information — plan the notes into the budget from the start (see ci-writing-style).

Routing map (stage → skill)

Is this a CI-shaped problem?       → ci-topic-selection
Whose conversation am I entering?  → ci-scholarly-positioning
What is the intervention?          → ci-argument-and-intervention
What objects does it read?         → ci-evidence-and-objects
Which theory, used how?            → ci-theory-and-method
How is the essay built?            → ci-structure-and-exposition
Does the prose earn the claim?     → ci-writing-style
Notes / images / Chicago style?    → ci-citation-and-style
How will it be judged?             → ci-review-process
Ready to submit?                   → ci-submission
Got a decision / revise request?   → ci-revision-and-response

Default order

topic-selection → scholarly-positioning → argument-and-intervention → evidence-and-objects → theory-and-method → structure-and-exposition → writing-style → citation-and-style → review-process → submission → revision-and-response

Iterate: most essays loop argument ↔ objects ↔ theory several times before the prose settles.

Symptom → route (when the stage is unclear)

Two routing mistakes to catch early

• Format drift. A Critical Response swelling past ~3,000 words is usually an Article trying to happen — reroute it into the full pipeline; an "Article" whose real content is a quarrel with one published CI piece should shrink into a Response.
• Late-stage gatekeeping. Author-secured permissions, 300 ppi image files, and Chicago-note discipline are pipeline stages, not submission-day chores; route image-heavy essays through ci-citation-and-style early — rights can outlast a decision.

Anti-patterns

• Treating CI like a single-discipline journal — the intervention must travel across fields
• A survey or literature review with no claim of its own (CI wants an intervention, not a digest)
• Theory used as decoration rather than as an instrument that does work on an object
• Skipping image permissions and Chicago-note discipline until the end

Router pass for Critical Inquiry

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the object, theoretical stakes, interpretive turn, and permission/citation discipline; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: humanities reviewers who expect a strong interpretive intervention rather than an empirical-results narrative.

• Do the pass: Run the pack as a sequence: fit gate, evidence gate, writing gate, source-map gate, and final output contract; stop when a gate lacks evidence.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against PMLA for literary-field reach, New Literary History for theory/history, Representations for historically grounded cultural analysis; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Stage】topic / positioning / intervention / objects / theory / structure / prose / citations / review / submit / revise
【Format】Article / Critical Response / Review / Special issue
【Route to】ci-<skill>
【Why】one line
【Then】the next skill after that

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — archives, image and text sources, theory shelf, Chicago tooling
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official CI URLs behind every fact in this pack