dotclaude

Skill in academic

supervisor-update

Turn the research log and recent work into a concise supervisor update or meeting agenda: progress since the last meeting with evidence, decisions taken and their reasons, results with numbers, blockers with the specific help needed, and the next steps with dates, in under a page. Use before a supervisor meeting, when asked for a progress email, or at a milestone.

Arguments
(optional) since when, the meeting date, and email or agenda format

Install

As a plugin

Bundled in the thesis plugin. Add the marketplace once, then install the bundle; it updates with the marketplace.

/plugin marketplace add KhaledSaeed18/dotclaude
/plugin install thesis@dotclaude

As a single item

Run from the project root; the skill lands under .claude/. Copy it to ~/.claude/ to make it global.

npx shadcn@latest add KhaledSaeed18/dotclaude/supervisor-update

Files installed

  • .claude/skills/supervisor-update/SKILL.md

What it does

Supervisors read updates between other things. The update's job is to let them help in the ten minutes they have: what moved, what is stuck, what decision they need to make. Everything else is noise.

Sources

  1. RESEARCH_LOG.md entries since the last meeting (or the period asked for). The log is the evidence; if it is thin, say so and ask the student what happened.
  2. Git history for the period (git log --since), new files under research/notes/, changed chapters.
  3. The last update or meeting notes, to answer what was promised.

Structure

Subject: Thesis update, 21 Sep 2026

Since 7 Sep:
- Read 6 papers on X (notes in research/notes/); the gap holds: none evaluates Y in setting Z.
- Built the data pipeline (commit a1b2c3d); 412 sessions collected, 9 discarded for missing labels.
- First results: variant B reduces latency 23% (n=10, SD 4%) at all sizes, table attached.

Decided:
- Dropped baseline C: its code does not run on our data format and reimplementing costs two weeks. Comparing against A and D only.

Need from you:
- Is a 23% reduction with n=10 enough for RQ2, or should I run n=30 (adds three days)?
- Ethics amendment for the follow-up survey: can you sign the form (attached) by Thursday?

Next two weeks:
- Run the n=30 sweep if agreed (by 28 Sep).
- Draft results chapter section 4.2 (by 3 Oct).
- Literature synthesis outline for chapter 2 (by 5 Oct).

Open questions carried over: 1 (dataset licence; waiting on the provider since 30 Aug).

Rules

  • Under 250 words for an email; under one page for an agenda.
  • Every progress bullet has evidence: a path, a commit, a number, a note. No "worked on the literature review".
  • Decisions include the reason and what they rule out, so the supervisor can object now, not at the defence.
  • "Need from you" is the most important section and comes before "Next"; each item is a question or a concrete action with a date.
  • Carry over open items until they are resolved, with their age; a supervisor sees a stuck item precisely because it keeps appearing.
  • Match the department's register: formal salutation or not, first name or title, as in previous correspondence.
  • Attach or link, never paste, tables and figures.
  • Run humanize before sending.

Write to research/updates/YYYY-MM-DD.md and return the text. Log the update itself as a /research-log entry if the student agrees.

This is the skill as installed, rendered from its source on GitHub. Read it as Markdown.

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