The Clo-Author

AI Research Architecture for Economics

An open-source Claude Code scaffold for empirical economics research — from literature review to journal submission. Can be adapted to adjacent fields (finance, accounting, marketing, management) by customizing the domain profile and journal profiles.

Built on Pedro Sant’Anna’s claude-code-my-workflow, reoriented for empirical research publication.

You describe a task in plain English. Claude plans the approach (you approve), dispatches specialized agents, reviews quality, fixes issues, and presents results — 17 agents, 10 commands, all running behind the scenes. You review the output at each stage.

Get Started in 5 Minutes

Step 1: Fork & Clone

gh repo fork hugosantanna/clo-author --clone
cd clo-author

Step 2: Start Claude Code

claude

Using VS Code? Open the Claude Code panel instead. Everything works the same.

Step 3: Paste the Starter Prompt

Fill in the bolded placeholders with your project details:

I am starting a new empirical research project in [YOUR FIELD] on [YOUR TOPIC]. Read CLAUDE.md and help me set up the project structure. Start with /discover --lit [YOUR TOPIC].

Claude reads the configuration, fills in your project details, and enters contractor mode — planning, implementing, reviewing, and verifying autonomously.

Step 4: Start Working

Once setup is done, just describe what you need:

  • “Review my paper” — checks your identification strategy, code, writing, and LaTeX in parallel
  • /review --methods paper/main.tex — validates your causal design assumptions, clustering, and inference
  • /analyze Data/cleaned/survey.csv — cleans data, runs your specification, produces tables and figures
  • /new-project health insurance — walks you through the full pipeline from literature review to submission
TipJust Want to Try 2 Commands?

Already have a paper? /review paper/main.tex checks your identification, code, writing, and LaTeX. Want to draft a section? /write intro produces a structured first draft adapted to your paper type. Everything else is optional — explore when you’re ready.

What Happens Behind the Scenes

You describe tasks in plain English. Claude dispatches specialized agents — one creates, another reviews — and presents results for your approval. Quality gates run in the background so broken work never ships. For the full picture: Walkthrough, Agents, Architecture, Commands.

That’s it. Everything else — agents, hooks, rules — runs automatically in the background.

If you prefer to configure things yourself instead of letting Claude handle it:

Customize CLAUDE.md — Open CLAUDE.md and replace all [BRACKETED PLACEHOLDERS]:

  1. Project name and institution
  2. Folder structure (adjust to your layout)
  3. Current project state (your papers and analyses)

Fill in the domain profile — Run /discover (interactive interview) or manually edit .claude/references/domain-profile.md:

  1. Your field and adjacent subfields
  2. Target journals ranked by tier
  3. Common data sources and identification strategies
  4. Field conventions and seminal references

Configure permissions — Review .claude/settings.json. The template includes permissions for git, LaTeX, R, and utility scripts.

Test it:

/tools compile paper/main.tex
/review --proofread paper/main.tex

Prerequisites

Tool Required For Install
Claude Code Everything npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
XeLaTeX Paper compilation TeX Live or MacTeX
R Analysis & figures r-project.org
gh CLI GitHub integration brew install gh (macOS)

Optional: Python, Julia (multi-language analysis), Quarto (web slides).

Origin

This project is a fork of Pedro Sant’Anna’s claude-code-my-workflow, which was built for Econ 730 at Emory University (6 lectures, 800+ slides). The Clo-Author reorients that infrastructure from lecture production to empirical economics research.

The /humanizer skill is by Siqi Chen, adapted here for academic writing.

Maintained by Hugo Sant’Anna. MIT License — fork it, customize it, make it yours.