Research Grant Writing

Overview

Research grant writing is the process of developing competitive funding proposals for federal agencies and foundations. Master agency-specific requirements, review criteria, narrative structure, budget preparation, and compliance for NSF (National Science Foundation), NIH (National Institutes of Health), DOE (Department of Energy), DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and Taiwan's NSTC (National Science and Technology Council) submissions.

Critical Principle: Grants are persuasive documents that must simultaneously demonstrate scientific rigor, innovation, feasibility, and broader impact. Each agency has distinct priorities, review criteria, formatting requirements, and strategic goals that must be addressed.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be used when:

• Writing research proposals for NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA, or NSTC programs
• Preparing project descriptions, specific aims, or technical narratives
• Developing broader impacts or significance statements
• Creating research timelines and milestone plans
• Preparing budget justifications and personnel allocation plans
• Responding to program solicitations or funding announcements
• Addressing reviewer comments in resubmissions
• Planning multi-institutional collaborative proposals
• Writing preliminary data or feasibility sections
• Preparing biosketches, CVs, or facilities descriptions

Establish the governing opportunity first

For each task, record agency, opportunity identifier and amendment, activity/project type, due date/time zone, eligibility, submission stage, application form version, limits, required attachments, review criteria and source URL/retrieval date. Check current notices as well as the original solicitation. An archived call, funded award, or budget announcement does not establish live funding availability. If the official package is unavailable, provide a bounded drafting review and list unresolved rules.

Build a requirement -> source section -> draft location -> gap matrix before judging compliance. Templates in assets/ are illustrative worksheets, not official forms. Never invent data, citations, investigator records, partner commitments or approvals. Inspect the final exported files; Markdown text does not establish page compliance.

For NIH, use this skill for requirements, critique, consistency checks and limited editing of investigator-authored material. NIH policy excludes applications or sections substantially developed by AI. Preserve applicant ownership of substantive science and writing; review or disclosure alone does not make substantial AI authorship compliant. Apply other agencies' current rules too.

Visual Enhancement (Optional)

Strong proposals often include 1–3 figures (timelines, workflow diagrams, preliminary data). Figures support review but are not a substitute for clear aims and methods.

When figures help:

• Research methodology and workflow diagrams
• Project timeline or Gantt charts
• Conceptual framework or system architecture (technical proposals)
• Experimental design flowcharts
• Broader impacts activity diagrams
• NSTC CM03 research architecture diagrams when they clarify the proposed methods

How to create figures:

• Preferred: Use the scientific-schematics skill (--doc-type grant) for AI-generated diagrams from a natural-language description
• Alternative: Build figures in your usual tools (matplotlib, Illustrator, PowerPoint, etc.)

Illustrative optional integration (CLI options checked; no paid generation tested in this refresh). Run from the repository root, with OPENROUTER_API_KEY set:

python skills/scientific-schematics/scripts/generate_schematic.py "project timeline with Year 1-3 milestones" -o figures/timeline.png --doc-type grant

Disclosure: AI schematic generation sends your prompt to OpenRouter (a third-party API). Do not include unpublished sensitive details unless that transmission is appropriate for your project.

Agency-Specific Overview

NSF (National Science Foundation)

Mission: Promote the progress of science and advance national health, prosperity, and welfare

Key Features:

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