A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification) or should be routed to TACAS, FMCAD, VMCAI, LPAR/IJCAR, POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA, or a…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Cav Topic Selection

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills cav-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/CAV-Skills/skills/cav-topic-selection .claude/skills/cav-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
cav-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.5k tokens
SKILL.md length
606 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 formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification) or should be routed to TACAS, FMCAD, VMCAI, LPAR/IJCAR, POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA, or a…

  • Deciding whether a formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification)
  • SKILL.md covers Two decisions, not one, Sibling-venue routing table, Contribution shapes CAV rewards and The re-label and swap tests, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
  • Should be routed to TACAS

What it does

Cav Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification) or should be routed to TACAS, FMCAD, VMCAI, LPAR/IJCAR, POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA, or a journal (FMSD/JAR/TOCL), and when choosing the right CAV category — Regular, Short Tool, Short Application, or Industrial Experience & Case Study.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.5k 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 formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification)
  • Should be routed to TACAS
  • POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA
  • A journal (FMSD/JAR/TOCL)

Example prompts

  • “/cav-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

Cav Topic Selection loads about 1.5k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 85 tokens; SKILL.md has 606 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
~1.5k

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). 606 words, ~1,540 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/cav-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
cav-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether a formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification) or should be routed to TACAS, FMCAD, VMCAI, LPAR/IJCAR, POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA, or a journal (FMSD/JAR/TOCL), and when choosing the right CAV category — Regular, Short Tool, Short Application, or Industrial Experience & Case Study.

CAV Topic Selection

Decide the venue and the category before drafting. CAV — the International Conference on Computer Aided Verification — is the flagship venue for computer-aided formal analysis of hardware and software systems: model checking, SMT and theorem proving, program analysis and synthesis, and their tools. Its papers are Springer LNCS chapters read by verification researchers, so reviewers reward a durable verification contribution with a stated guarantee, not a systems demo or an ML result with a verification label attached.

Two decisions, not one

At CAV you choose both a venue (CAV vs. its siblings) and a category (Regular vs. Tool vs. Application vs. Industrial). Get the venue right first, then the category — a strong tool filed as a Regular Paper, or a technique squeezed into a 10-page tool paper, wastes the fit.

Sibling-venue routing table

Signal in your projectBetter homeWhy
A general verification technique/algorithm with a soundness/completeness result, mature enough for the flagshipCAVFlagship scope; the Regular-Paper archetype
Emphasis on tools, algorithms, and their construction/analysis, or you want the ETAPS calendarTACASTools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems; overlaps heavily but is a distinct venue
Hardware-oriented or applied model checking, or a formal-methods-in-design focusFMCADFormal Methods in Computer-Aided Design
Verification, model checking, and abstract interpretation with a foundations flavor, often earlier-stageVMCAIVerification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation
Automated/interactive theorem proving or logic-focusedIJCAR / LPAR / ITP / CADEReasoning and proof communities
The core is a programming-language semantics, type system, or PL analysisPOPL / PLDI / OOPSLAPL venues; verification is a means, not the contribution
The study is too long or too deep for the page limitFMSD / JAR / TOCL / STTTJournals with no conference page ceiling

CAV and TACAS overlap the most; the honest tie-breakers are the calendar (CAV is annual in mid-year, often under FLoC or standalone; TACAS runs at ETAPS in spring) and community pull for your subarea. A strong paper is publishable at either — route to the nearer honest fit.

Show full SKILL.md (275 more words)Show less

Contribution shapes CAV rewards

  • Technique / algorithm with a guarantee — a new decision procedure, model-checking algorithm, abstraction, invariant-synthesis method, or proof technique, with a stated soundness/completeness property and evidence it scales past prior methods (the CEGAR / interpolation lineage).
  • Tool paper — a usable, downloadable verification tool (solver, model checker, prover, analyzer) evaluated on standard benchmarks, with the engineering foregrounded (the CVC4 / Marabou lineage).
  • New application domain — bringing a hard real problem into verification's scope with a real technique (the neural-network-verification lineage).
  • Application / case study / industrial experience — applying verification to a concrete system and reporting what worked, what did not, and what generalizes.

The re-label and swap tests

Two quick tests sharpen a borderline verdict:

  • Guarantee test: does your contribution come with a formal property (soundness, completeness, an equisatisfiability or refinement claim)? If the "result" is only a benchmark score with no guarantee, it may be a tool note (TACAS) or a heuristic paper, not a CAV Regular Paper.
  • Re-label test: could this paper be submitted to FMCAD or VMCAI unchanged and read as native there? If its heart is hardware-design methodology or early-stage abstract interpretation, route accordingly; CAV rewards the general, flagship framing.

Category-selection cues (once CAV is chosen)

text
[Regular]      a technique/algorithm + proof + benchmark evaluation           -> 18 pages, anonymized
[Short Tool]   a downloadable tool; the contribution is the usable system     -> 10 pages, NOT anonymized
[Short App]    verification applied to a specific problem, technique-light     -> 10 pages, anonymized
[Industrial]   a real/industrial deployment experience or case study          -> 10 pages, NOT anonymized

If you have both a technique and a tool, the usual move is a Regular Paper that describes the technique with the tool as its evaluation vehicle — reserve the Tool Paper for when the system itself is the contribution.

Cheap reconnaissance before committing

text
[Scope]     scan the last two CAV programs (dblp, i-cav.org) for your subarea
            -> 3+ recent papers = a reviewer pool exists; 0 = opening or mismatch
[Benchmarks] is there a standard benchmark set (SV-COMP, SMT-COMP, HWMCC, VNN-COMP) reviewers expect?
            -> yes and you did not use it => reframe or add it before submitting
[Calendar]  compare the next CAV deadline with TACAS/FMCAD/VMCAI dates -> route to the nearest
            honest fit rather than idling a cycle

Decision procedure

text
[Audience]   who acts differently if the claim holds? -> verification-tool builders/users/theorists?
[Claim type] technique-with-guarantee / tool / application / industrial experience
[CAV vs sibling] both fit? -> choose by calendar, community pull, and hardware/PL/logic tilt
[Category]   technique+proof -> Regular; usable system -> Tool; applied -> Application/Industrial
[Verdict]    CAV <category> / sibling venue / journal, with a one-line reason

Run this before the writing skills; a wrong venue or category decision wastes every later step. When the verdict is CAV, continue with cav-workflow for the calendar and cav-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 CAV-Skills/skills/cav-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

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Cav 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.

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Cav Topic Selection this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
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Santa Methodaffaan-m/ECC275k—~2.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Santa Methodaffaan-m/ECC275k—~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Formal Methods Reconcilermizchi/skills356—~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Modern Array Methodsthedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist74k—~494Automated safety check: PassMIT

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Questions about Cav Topic Selection

What does Cav Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification) or should be routed to TACAS, FMCAD, VMCAI, LPAR/IJCAR, POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA, or a…. Cav Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification) or should be routed to TACAS, FMCAD, VMCAI, LPAR/IJCAR, POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA, or a journal (FMSD/JAR/TOCL), and when choosing the right CAV category — Regular, Short Tool, Short Application, or Industrial Experience & Case Study.

When should I use Cav Topic Selection?

Cav Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether a formal-methods project belongs at CAV (Computer Aided Verification); should be routed to TACAS; POPL/PLDI/OOPSLA; A journal (FMSD/JAR/TOCL).

How do I install Cav Topic Selection in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Cav Topic Selection in Codex?

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

Can I use Cav 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 cav-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/cav-topic-selection, .gemini/skills/cav-topic-selection, .github/skills/cav-topic-selection and .opencode/skills/cav-topic-selection in your project.

What does Cav Topic Selection need to run?

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

Does Cav 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 Cav 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 Cav Topic Selection use?

Cav 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 Cav Topic Selection use?

About 1.5k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.2k 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 Cav Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Cav Topic Selection: Santa Method (affaan-m/ECC, 275k stars), Santa Method (affaan-m/ECC, 275k stars), Santa Method (affaan-m/ECC, 275k stars) and Formal Methods Reconciler (mizchi/skills, 356 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Cav 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.