A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering) or should be routed to ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ISSTA, a PL venue, or an…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Ase Topic Selection

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ase-topic-selection -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills ase-topic-selection --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/ASE-Skills/skills/ase-topic-selection .claude/skills/ase-topic-selection && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
ase-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.6k tokens
SKILL.md length
695 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering) or should be routed to ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ISSTA, a PL venue, or an…

  • Deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering)
  • SKILL.md covers The routing question that…, Sibling-venue routing table, Contribution shapes ASE rewards and The model-swap and re-label…, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
  • Should be routed to ICSE

What it does

Ase Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering) or should be routed to ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ISSTA, a PL venue, or an SE journal, and when distinguishing ASE by its automation-centric contribution shape, its tool/technique emphasis, and its AI4SE/SE4AI scope.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.6k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

The repository describes itself as: Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. | 覆盖主流期刊的… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering)
  • Should be routed to ICSE
  • When distinguishing ASE by its automation-centric contribution shape
  • Its tool/technique emphasis

Example prompts

  • “/ase-topic-selection”

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 932eb23. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Ase Topic Selection loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 85 tokens; SKILL.md has 695 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~85
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.6k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills at commit 932eb23, republished under its MIT licence (© brycewang-stanford). 695 words, ~1,573 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/ase-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
ase-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering) or should be routed to ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ISSTA, a PL venue, or an SE journal, and when distinguishing ASE by its automation-centric contribution shape, its tool/technique emphasis, and its AI4SE/SE4AI scope.

ASE Topic Selection

Decide the venue before drafting. ASE — the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering — is the home for research that automates software-engineering tasks: the analysis, design, implementation, testing, comprehension, and maintenance of software, and increasingly the two-way street of AI for SE and SE for AI. Its reviewers read for a technique or tool that automates something, evaluated on real subjects. A paper whose real center is a broad empirical observation, a testing-theory result, or a pure ML advance is respected and then rejected as off-center.

The routing question that matters most

The decisive ASE question is not "is this SE?" but "is the contribution an automation — a technique or tool that does an SE task a human or a weaker tool did before?" If the beating heart of the paper is a new automated mechanism (an analysis, a generator, a synthesizer, a repair technique, a learned model applied to an SE task), ASE is a natural home. If the heart is a finding, a theory, or a measurement study, a sibling fits better — even when the topic overlaps.

Sibling-venue routing table

Signal in your projectBetter homeWhy
Core is a technique/tool that automates an SE task, evaluated on real systemsASEAutomated software engineering is its named center; dual IEEE/ACM, IEEE-Xplore+ACM-DL proceedings
Broad empirical or foundational SE contribution; the lesson is a finding, not a toolESEC/FSEThe general-SE flagship; PACMSE journal model, empirical breadth
Equally broad SE technique, but ICSE's cycle/stage fits and you want its reachICSEThe other general-SE flagship; different calendar and (IEEE-side) format
Depth in testing theory, program analysis foundations, or fault detectionISSTADeeper testing/analysis expertise, round-based reviewing
The automated mechanism is a program-language/compiler advancePLDI / OOPSLA / POPLPL venues own the language-mechanism contribution
The contribution is a new model/architecture; the SE task is a benchmarkan ML venueModel-as-contribution routes out of SE
Study too long or too nuanced for the page budgetTSE / TOSEM / EMSEJournals with no page ceiling; some feed ASE's Journal-First track

Contribution shapes ASE rewards

  • Technique + tool + evaluation on real subjects — a new analysis, test-generation, synthesis, repair, or comprehension technique, embodied in a tool and run on real systems against credible tool baselines (the TestEra / runtime-monitoring lineage in the exemplars library).
  • Automated technique with a disciplined empirical evaluation — pairing an automatic method with an honest comparison and effectiveness metric (the Tarantula fault-localization lineage).
  • Learning-based automation with the SE task as the point — learned code representations or models applied to a real SE task, where the task result, not the architecture, is the contribution (the code-clone-detection lineage).
  • AI4SE / SE4AI — using AI to automate SE tasks, or applying SE automation to build, test, and maintain AI/ML systems; a growing ASE center of gravity.
  • Tooling infrastructure and datasets — often routed to the co-located Tools and Datasets track when the contribution is a usable artifact more than a research claim.
Show full SKILL.md (212 more words)Show less

The model-swap and re-label tests

Two quick tests sharpen a borderline verdict:

  • Model-swap test: if your paper leans on an LLM or learner, ask whether the automation still stands as a contribution when the model is swapped. If the design (the analysis, the coupling, the oracle) survives, it is ASE-shaped; if only the model result remains, route to an ML venue.
  • Re-label test: could this be submitted to FSE unchanged and read as a broad empirical SE paper, or to ISSTA as a testing-depth paper? If its heart is automation machinery, ASE fits; if its heart is a finding or testing theory, route accordingly.

Which co-located track fits

  • Research Papers — a full technique/tool contribution with real-subject evaluation.
  • NIER (New Ideas and Emerging Results) — a bold new direction not yet backed by a full evaluation (4 pages): groundbreaking, reflection, or late-breaking-advances.
  • Tools and Datasets — a usable tool or dataset as the contribution (short, demo-oriented).
  • Journal-First — work already accepted at TSE/TOSEM/EMSE (after 1 Jan 2025) presented at ASE.
  • Industry Showcase / Doctoral Symposium — practitioner results and PhD-stage work.

Cheap reconnaissance before committing

text
[Scope]   scan the last two ASE programs (dblp conf/kbse, conf.researchr.org) for your subarea
          -> 3+ recent papers = a reviewer pool exists; 0 = opening or mismatch
[Shape]   is your contribution a runnable automation, or a finding/theory? -> automation => ASE
[Citations] majority SE-automation venues (ASE/ICSE/FSE/ISSTA)? -> majority non-SE => naturalize first
[Calendar] compare the next ASE deadline with ICSE/FSE/ISSTA/journal dates -> nearest honest fit

Decision procedure

text
[Audience] who runs your automation if the claim holds? -> SE developers/testers/maintainers/tool-builders?
[Claim type] technique+tool / automated-technique+evaluation / learning-based automation / AI4SE-SE4AI
[Automation test] is a runnable mechanism the contribution? -> yes => ASE; no => FSE/ISSTA/PL/ML
[Track check] full technique -> Research; bold early idea -> NIER; usable tool -> Tools & Datasets
[Verdict] ASE research track / co-located track / sibling venue / journal, with a one-line reason

Run this before the writing skills; a wrong venue decision wastes every later step. When the verdict is ASE, continue with ase-workflow for the calendar and ase-writing-style for the paper shape.

© brycewang-stanford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in ASE-Skills/skills/ase-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Ase Topic Selection next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Ase Topic Selection compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Ase Topic Selection this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
TopicsZimoLiao/scholaraio576—~294Automated safety check: PassMIT
Topic Modelingbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills4.5k—~3.7kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Bestblogs Topicginobefun/BestBlogs4k—~670Automated safety check: PassNone
Zsxq Topicitwanger/toBeBetterJavaer18k—~564Automated safety check: PassNone
Aselamm-mit/scienceclaw244—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassLGPL-3.0

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Questions about Ase Topic Selection

What does Ase Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering) or should be routed to ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ISSTA, a PL venue, or an…. Ase Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering) or should be routed to ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ISSTA, a PL venue, or an SE journal, and when distinguishing ASE by its automation-centric contribution shape, its tool/technique emphasis, and its AI4SE/SE4AI scope.

When should I use Ase Topic Selection?

Ase Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ASE (IEEE/ACM Automated Software Engineering); should be routed to ICSE; when distinguishing ASE by its automation-centric contribution shape; its tool/technique emphasis.

How do I install Ase Topic Selection in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ase-topic-selection -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (ASE-Skills/skills/ase-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/ase-topic-selection in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Ase Topic Selection in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ase-topic-selection -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (ASE-Skills/skills/ase-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/ase-topic-selection in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Ase Topic Selection in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ase-topic-selection -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/ase-topic-selection, .gemini/skills/ase-topic-selection, .github/skills/ase-topic-selection and .opencode/skills/ase-topic-selection in your project.

What does Ase Topic Selection need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Ase Topic Selection is instructions for the agent only.

Does Ase Topic Selection access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Ase Topic Selection safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Ase Topic Selection use?

Ase Topic Selection is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Ase Topic Selection use?

About 1.6k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.3k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Ase Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Ase Topic Selection: Topics (ZimoLiao/scholaraio, 576 stars), Topic Modeling (brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, 4.5k stars), Bestblogs Topic (ginobefun/BestBlogs, 4k stars) and Zsxq Topic (itwanger/toBeBetterJavaer, 18k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Ase Topic Selection?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,219 GitHub stars. The repository holds 2,387 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 27, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.