A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and, if so, whether it is a Track A (algorithms, complexity, games) or Track B (automata…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Icalp Topic Selection

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills icalp-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/ICALP-Skills/skills/icalp-topic-selection .claude/skills/icalp-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
icalp-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.6k tokens
SKILL.md length
680 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 theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and, if so, whether it is a Track A (algorithms, complexity, games) or Track B (automata…

  • Works in 2 steps: Is this an ICALP paper at all, versus… → Which track — Track A (Algorithms,…
  • Deciding whether a theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and
  • SKILL.md covers Two decisions, not one, Track A vs Track B, ICALP vs the US theory venues… and Contribution shapes ICALP…, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Icalp Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and, if so, whether it is a Track A (algorithms, complexity, games) or Track B (automata, logic, semantics, theory of programming) paper, and when distinguishing ICALP from the US theory venues STOC, FOCS, and SODA or from a TCS journal by contribution shape, community, and the LIPIcs open-access model.

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 theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and
  • Whether it is a Track A (algorithms
  • Track B (automata
  • Theory of programming) paper

Example prompts

  • “/icalp-topic-selection”

Workflow steps

2 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Is this an ICALP paper at all, versus STOC/FOCS/SODA, a specialized venue (LICS, CCC, SoCG,
  2. Which track — Track A (Algorithms, Complexity and Games) or **Track B (Automata, Logic,

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

Icalp Topic Selection loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 104 tokens; SKILL.md has 680 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~104
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). 680 words, ~1,629 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/icalp-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
icalp-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether a theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and, if so, whether it is a Track A (algorithms, complexity, games) or Track B (automata, logic, semantics, theory of programming) paper, and when distinguishing ICALP from the US theory venues STOC, FOCS, and SODA or from a TCS journal by contribution shape, community, and the LIPIcs open-access model.

ICALP Topic Selection

Decide the venue and the track before drafting. ICALP — the EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming — is Europe's flagship theoretical-computer-science conference and the annual meeting of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. Its contribution is a theorem: a precise statement in a clean model, proved completely. A paper whose real deliverable is a system, a benchmark result, or an application with no new theorem is respected and then rejected as out of scope.

Two decisions, not one

Routing to ICALP is genuinely two questions:

  1. Is this an ICALP paper at all, versus STOC/FOCS/SODA, a specialized venue (LICS, CCC, SoCG, CONCUR, ...), or a journal?
  2. Which track — Track A (Algorithms, Complexity and Games) or Track B (Automata, Logic, Semantics and Theory of Programming)?

Both matter: the tracks have separate program committees and separate HotCRP servers, and Track B carries a rebuttal while Track A does not.

Track A vs Track B

Signal in your resultTrack
A faster algorithm, a better approximation ratio, a new data structure, a fine-grained boundA
A complexity lower bound, hardness, or a completeness result about computationA
Algorithmic game theory, mechanism design, equilibrium computationA
Decidability/complexity of a logic or a theory, model theory of computationB
Automata, formal languages, transducers, infinite-state systems (Petri nets/VASS, pushdown)B
Semantics of programming languages, lambda calculi, type theory, verification foundationsB
Concurrency theory, process calculi, category-theoretic semanticsB

Borderline cases exist (e.g. logic-flavored complexity). Resolve them by which community should referee the proof — the one that will recognize the technique and the prior bound — and by which track's recent programs contain your subarea.

ICALP vs the US theory venues and journals

Signal in your projectBetter homeWhy
Broad TCS result, ready now, and the February ICALP deadline is the nearest honest fitICALPEATCS European flagship; LIPIcs open access; two tracks
Top-tier breakthrough aimed at the US theory community, STOC/FOCS timing fitsSTOC / FOCSACM/IEEE flagships; different calendar, single-column ACM/IEEE style
Core is discrete algorithms / data structures with a SODA fitSODASIAM algorithms venue; different community and calendar
Logic in computer science specifically (not general Track B breadth)LICSDedicated logic venue; overlaps Track B, different community
Computational complexity specificallyCCCDedicated complexity venue
Computational geometrySoCGDedicated geometry venue
Result too long, or wants a definitive journal version of recordjournal (JACM, TALG, TCS, LMCS, ...)No conference page ceiling; some ICALP papers later have journal versions

ICALP's distinctive pull is European TCS community + LIPIcs open access + a two-track single February cycle. It is not STOC/FOCS/SODA; do not carry their templates, blinding regimes, or calendars across.

Show full SKILL.md (243 more words)Show less

Contribution shapes ICALP rewards

  • A better bound — a faster algorithm, a smaller approximation ratio, a tighter complexity bound than the best known, with the improvement stated against a named prior result.
  • A lower bound / hardness / impossibility — proving a limitation, conditionally or unconditionally, in a precisely defined model.
  • A decidability / complexity classification — pinning the exact complexity of deciding a logic, language, or verification problem (a signature Track B move).
  • A dichotomy or complete characterization — classifying an entire family rather than one instance.
  • A new model or a foundational result — a clean model with a clear TCS payoff; "foundations" is in the name for both tracks.

The re-route tests

  • Theorem test: strip the implementation and the experiments — is there still a theorem worth proving? If not, the paper belongs at an experimental-algorithms, database, or systems venue, not ICALP.
  • Prior-bound test: can you name the best previous bound your result beats? If you cannot, either the problem is not yet a recognized ICALP problem, or the contribution is not a bound (an icalp-writing-style framing fix, or a re-route).
  • Track-referee test: who should check the proof — an algorithms/complexity person (A) or an automata/logic/semantics person (B)? If the honest answer is "a systems/ML/database person," ICALP is the wrong venue.

Cheap reconnaissance before committing

text
[Scope]    scan the last two ICALP programs (dblp db/conf/icalp) for your subarea and track
           -> present in Track A/B recently = a reviewer pool exists; absent = opening or mismatch
[Citations] is your bibliography majority TCS venues (ICALP/STOC/FOCS/SODA/LICS/CCC + TCS journals)?
           -> majority applied venues => reviewers read you as a visitor; reconsider the venue
[Calendar] ICALP has ONE annual February deadline; compare with STOC/FOCS/SODA/LICS dates
           -> route to the nearest honest fit rather than waiting a full year for a marginal preference

Decision procedure

text
[Is there a theorem?] strip code/experiments -> new theorem remains? no => not ICALP
[ICALP vs US/journal] European TCS breadth, Feb deadline nearest, open-access wanted? -> ICALP
[Track] bound/algorithm/complexity/games => A ; logic/automata/semantics/verification => B
[Specialized check] pure logic => LICS? pure complexity => CCC? geometry => SoCG?
[Verdict] ICALP Track A / ICALP Track B / sibling venue / journal, with a one-line reason

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

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Icalp 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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Questions about Icalp Topic Selection

What does Icalp Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and, if so, whether it is a Track A (algorithms, complexity, games) or Track B (automata…. Icalp Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and, if so, whether it is a Track A (algorithms, complexity, games) or Track B (automata, logic, semantics, theory of programming) paper, and when distinguishing ICALP from the US theory venues STOC, FOCS, and SODA or from a TCS journal by contribution shape, community, and the LIPIcs open-access model.

When should I use Icalp Topic Selection?

Icalp Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether a theoretical computer science result belongs at ICALP (EATCS) and; whether it is a Track A (algorithms; track B (automata; theory of programming) paper.

How do I install Icalp Topic Selection in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Icalp Topic Selection in Codex?

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

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

What does Icalp Topic Selection need to run?

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

Does Icalp 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 Icalp 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 Icalp Topic Selection use?

Icalp 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 Icalp Topic Selection use?

About 1.6k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.5k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

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Who maintains Icalp 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.