# Submission rehearsal & arXiv

Submission rehearsal checks a particular paper against a selected venue's recorded requirements. The arXiv tool builds and verifies a source package. Neither action submits the manuscript to an external service.

## Research and select a venue

Open **Publish → Submission rehearsal**. **Find venues with agent** prepares a research request; add field, timeline, location or publication preferences, choose a model and send it.

Venue cards record edition/track, fit, event details, deadlines and requirements. Compare up to three candidates and inspect linked sources. Agent-authored requirements retain quotations and retrieval provenance; a quotation does not establish that every condition was captured. Confirm the official instructions for the correct edition.

Choose the main document and select a target. VersoFold saves the current requirement set. Later edits to the candidate are flagged rather than silently changing the selected target; review and select again to adopt them.

Page requirements override the corresponding budget segments for that document. Other segments retain existing limits. Selecting a venue does not reformat your source or turn a draft into an anonymous submission automatically.

## Run a rehearsal

**Build & run rehearsal** saves edits, compiles the selected root and checks recorded output and source. It can inspect build/citation/reference warnings, measured page limits, a standard abstract's estimated length, TODOs, reviewer points and drafting placeholders.

Other requirements, including anonymity, figure quality, formatting and supplements, remain explicit review items. Automatic hints cannot establish scientific completeness or full venue compliance.

For each author-reviewed item, record what you inspected. An anonymity check should include visible author details, acknowledgments, links, supplementary content and PDF metadata as applicable to the venue's instructions.

## Keep the report current

Changing sources, PDF bytes, settings, target requirements or outstanding-work counts makes the report stale. Rerun the rehearsal before making current judgments or saving a final checkpoint. A new rehearsal preserves earlier judgments only when the inspected state remains unchanged.

Download the Markdown report or save a named manuscript checkpoint. Open its version in History to connect the readiness decision to the exact source state.

A green technical check means that check passed. It does not guarantee acceptance by a submission portal, satisfy unspecified venue rules or establish that the research is correct.

## Prepare an arXiv source package

Open **Publish → Package for arXiv**. The tool starts from the chosen document and walks its reachable sources, figures and local style/class files. Review the planned file list: unrelated notes, other roots and app metadata should not become submission contents accidentally.

When the paper has a preprint edition (see [Preprint & editions](editions.md)), the package is built from the preprint: the authors named, the appendix in, and every edition mark resolved in the copy, so text meant only for the submission or the supplementary material does not reach arXiv. The panel says which edition it packages; open it from the preprint's card in **Preprint & editions** to package that edition explicitly.

The available transformations operate on a copy:

- Carry or inline the compiled `.bbl`, or retain bibliography source when the selected packaging strategy calls for it.
- Remove supported review/draft options and line-numbering commands where selected.
- Convert SVG figures to PDF using an available supported converter.
- Add the selected PDF-output setup where appropriate.
- Optionally flatten standard includes into a single source.
- Optionally strip comments while preserving important paragraph/newline behavior.

Compile first if the package needs a `.bbl` that does not yet exist. A missing converter or missing referenced asset needs to be resolved before a valid package can be produced.

## Verify the actual bundle

Inspect the transformation plan, build the bundle and read its recorded verification result. The app can compile the prepared package with bibliography generation disabled to check the selected bundled-bibliography strategy.

Flattening is intentionally conservative around unresolved inputs, comments, literal environments and `\includeonly`. Comment removal and template-option changes can affect rendering, so inspect the resulting PDF as well as the source archive.

Use current arXiv/venue instructions for the final upload requirements. The local packaging tool verifies its own selected build strategy; it does not contact the submission portal or guarantee that the service accepts every dependency.

## Preserve a reproducible submission

Freeze necessary remote inputs and generated assets, compile, save the named version with its matching PDF, export the source package and retain the rehearsal report. Record the exact entry/root and engine. A label such as “camera ready” does not itself change anonymity or class options.

Related: [page budgets](page-layout.md), [remote data](remote-data.md), [versions](versions.md), [rebuttals](deadlines-rebuttal.md).