A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Fse Topic Selection

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills fse-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/FSE-Skills/skills/fse-topic-selection .claude/skills/fse-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
fse-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
625 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 ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when…

  • Deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE
  • SKILL.md covers The routing question that…, Sibling-venue routing table, Contribution shapes FSE 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

Fse Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when distinguishing FSE from its sibling general-SE flagship ICSE by contribution shape, evidence maturity, and the PACMSE journal-style fit.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k 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 ESEC/FSE
  • Should be routed to ICSE
  • An SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM)
  • When distinguishing FSE from its sibling general-SE flagship ICSE by contribution shape

Example prompts

  • “/fse-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

Fse Topic Selection loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 83 tokens; SKILL.md has 625 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~83
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.4k

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). 625 words, ~1,429 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/fse-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
fse-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when distinguishing FSE from its sibling general-SE flagship ICSE by contribution shape, evidence maturity, and the PACMSE journal-style fit.

FSE Topic Selection

Decide the venue before drafting. FSE — the ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering, historically ESEC/FSE on its European rotation — is one of the two general software-engineering flagships, alongside ICSE, and the ACM SIGSOFT home for foundational and empirical SE. Its research papers are PACMSE journal articles, so reviewers read for a durable software-engineering contribution, not a one-conference result. A technically strong paper whose real lesson is about compilers, PL semantics, or pure ML is respected and then rejected as out of scope.

The routing question that matters most

FSE and ICSE overlap heavily in scope and reviewer pool, so the decisive question is rarely "is this SE?" but "which SE community and calendar fits this paper now?" Both welcome techniques, empirical studies, and human-factors work. Use the finer signals below and the live deadlines to choose — a strong paper is publishable at either, and the nearer honest deadline usually wins.

Sibling-venue routing table

Signal in your projectBetter homeWhy
Broad SE contribution, empirical or conceptual, ready now, and the next FSE deadline is nearerESEC/FSEPACMSE journal-style track; the second general-SE flagship
Equally broad, but ICSE's cycle lands sooner or you want its stageICSESibling general-SE flagship; different calendar and template (IEEE 10+2)
Core is automating a development task; tool/systems flavor dominatesASEAutomated software engineering is its named center
Core is testing, program analysis, or fault detection with depthISSTADeeper testing/analysis expertise, round-based reviewing
The whole method is repository miningMSRPurpose-built co-located conference
Maintenance and software evolution focusICSMEScope match
Study is too long or too nuanced for the page budgetEMSE / TSE / TOSEMJournals with no conference page ceiling; some offer a journal-first path back to an FSE stage

Contribution shapes FSE rewards

  • Technique + tool + evaluation on real subjects — a new analysis, testing, repair, synthesis, or recommendation technique, embodied in a tool and evaluated on real systems against credible baselines (the CUTE lineage).
  • Empirical study — mining, controlled experiments, or mixed-methods work that changes what the community believes about how software is built or maintained (the flaky-tests lineage).
  • Methodology / measurement validity — interrogating an instrument the field relies on (the "are mutants a valid substitute?" lineage) — a distinctly prized FSE mode.
  • Human and organizational factors — how practitioners actually use, trust, or abandon tools, with sound qualitative method.
  • Foundational or conceptual — models, theories, or formal underpinnings with a clear SE payoff — the "foundations" in the name is not decorative.
Show full SKILL.md (216 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 software- engineering lesson survives swapping the model for another. If not, the model is the contribution and a PL/ML venue fits better.
  • Re-label test: could this paper be submitted to ISSTA or ASE unchanged and read as native there? If its heart is testing depth or automation machinery, route accordingly; FSE rewards the broader SE framing and empirical breadth.

Evidence maturity, without the ladder cliché

Fit is necessary but not sufficient: the same idea sits at different doors depending on how far the evidence has come. An observation with an argument but no study is a workshop or vision paper; a working technique evaluated only on examples you chose needs real subjects before the research track; a study too deep for the page budget belongs in a journal first. Submitting one step early earns a polite "promising, but..." and costs a full cycle, because FSE, like its siblings, runs on an annual rhythm.

Cheap reconnaissance before committing

text
[Scope]   scan the last two FSE programs (dblp, conf.researchr.org) for your subarea
          -> 3+ recent papers = a reviewer pool exists; 0 = opening or mismatch
[Citations] is your bibliography majority SE venues (ICSE/FSE/ASE/ISSTA/EMSE/TSE)?
          -> majority non-SE => reviewers read you as a visitor; naturalize the intro first
[Calendar] compare the next FSE deadline with ICSE/ASE/ISSTA/journal dates -> route to the
          nearest honest fit rather than waiting a year for a marginal preference

Decision procedure

text
[Audience] who acts differently if the claim holds? -> SE developers/testers/maintainers/researchers?
[Claim type] technique / empirical / methodology / human-factors / foundational
[FSE vs ICSE] both fit? -> choose by calendar, community pull, and template preference
[Sibling check] testing depth -> ISSTA; automation core -> ASE; mining-only -> MSR
[Verdict] ESEC/FSE research track / sibling venue / journal-first, with a one-line reason

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

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Fse 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.

Fse Topic Selection compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Fse Topic Selection this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
TopicsZimoLiao/scholaraio577—~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
Pubmed Topic Recommendaipoch/medical-research-skills2k—~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Questions about Fse Topic Selection

What does Fse Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when…. Fse Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE or should be routed to ICSE, ASE, ISSTA, MSR, ICSME, or an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM), and when distinguishing FSE from its sibling general-SE flagship ICSE by contribution shape, evidence maturity, and the PACMSE journal-style fit.

When should I use Fse Topic Selection?

Fse Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether a software-engineering project belongs at ESEC/FSE; should be routed to ICSE; an SE journal (EMSE/TSE/TOSEM); when distinguishing FSE from its sibling general-SE flagship ICSE by contribution shape.

How do I install Fse Topic Selection in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Fse Topic Selection in Codex?

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

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

What does Fse Topic Selection need to run?

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

Does Fse 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 Fse 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 Fse Topic Selection use?

Fse 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 Fse Topic Selection use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.7k 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 Fse Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Fse Topic Selection: Topics (ZimoLiao/scholaraio, 577 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 Fse Topic Selection?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,228 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.