A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a project belongs at ISCA, the ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution, choosing between…

MITAuto-check passed

Install Isca Topic Selection

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills isca-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/ISCA-Skills/skills/isca-topic-selection .claude/skills/isca-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
isca-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.7k tokens
SKILL.md length
745 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 project belongs at ISCA, the ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution, choosing between…

  • Deciding whether a project belongs at ISCA
  • SKILL.md covers The center-of-gravity question, ISCA's seat in the…, Main track or industry track and Fit worksheet, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
  • The ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution

What it does

Isca Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a project belongs at ISCA, the ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution, choosing between ISCA's November gate and the MICRO, HPCA, and ASPLOS seats in the architecture year, and weighing the main track against the industry track.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.7k 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 project belongs at ISCA
  • The ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution
  • Choosing between ISCAs November gate and the MICRO
  • ASPLOS seats in the architecture year

Example prompts

  • “/isca-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

Isca Topic Selection loads about 1.7k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 84 tokens; SKILL.md has 745 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~84
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.7k

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). 745 words, ~1,708 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/isca-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
isca-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether a project belongs at ISCA, the ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution, choosing between ISCA's November gate and the MICRO, HPCA, and ASPLOS seats in the architecture year, and weighing the main track against the industry track.

ISCA Topic Selection

ISCA reviews reward papers whose central object is a hardware organization: a pipeline, a cache hierarchy, a memory controller, an accelerator datapath, an interconnect, a coherence or consistency mechanism. Software may motivate the work and co-design may strengthen it, but at ISCA the question a program committee member carries into every discussion is what does this paper teach us about how to build machines? Projects that cannot answer that in one sentence tend to be respected and rejected in the same review.

The center-of-gravity question

Write down the single artifact your evaluation section studies hardest. Then ask where its novelty lives:

  • In the hardware organization — a new structure, policy, or datapath whose behavior you measure across workloads. Natural ISCA material.
  • In the hardware/software contract — an ISA extension or OS-visible mechanism where the software side changes too. ISCA takes these, but ASPLOS's reviewer pool is built for them; decide by which half carries the insight.
  • In the software layer alone — a compiler pass, runtime, or scheduler running on unmodified silicon. Reviewers will ask what the architecture lesson is; if the answer is "none, but it's fast," route away before writing.
  • In circuits or devices — below the microarchitecture line, DAC/ISSCC-adjacent venues own the expertise ISCA reviewers will say they lack.

A useful stress test: describe the contribution without naming any benchmark. If what remains is a statement about machine organization ("decoupling X from Y removes the Z stall class"), the paper is ISCA-shaped. If what remains is only a speedup, it is a results report, and every top venue struggles to accept those.

ISCA's seat in the architecture year

ISCA's November deadline and June conference define one corner of a four-venue rotation. Retargeting between them is normal practice; plan it as a calendar decision, not an act of desperation. Dates below reflect the most recent verified cycle (ISCA 2026) — reopen each venue's current CFP before committing.

VenueTypical deadline seatConference seatTakes best what
ISCAmid-November (Nov 10/17, 2025 for the 2026 edition)late JuneBroad architecture ideas: cores, memory, accelerators, interconnect, evaluation methodology
MICROspring (roughly April)OctoberMicroarchitecture depth: front-end, prediction, scheduling, implementation-level mechanisms
HPCAmid-summer (roughly July/August)FebruaryArchitecture with a performance-systems flavor; a fast second gate after a June ISCA reject
ASPLOSmultiple gates per editionspringWork whose hardware and software halves are inseparable

The practical rhythm from ISCA's seat: a paper rejected from ISCA's November gate can be revised for MICRO in spring; a paper that misses November because evidence was immature has HPCA's summer gate before the next ISCA November. Retarget on reviewer-pool fit, never on deadline convenience alone — each venue's committee notices work dressed for a different room.

Show full SKILL.md (297 more words)Show less

Main track or industry track

ISCA 2026 ran a separate industry track with its own later deadlines (abstracts December 5, papers December 12, 2025). Choose it when the contribution's value is evidence from real products at scale — measurements, deployment lessons, or design retrospectives that academia cannot produce — rather than a novel mechanism. A novel mechanism from an industrial lab still belongs in the main track.

Fit worksheet

Run this before any drafting; keep the answers in the repo.

text
CLAIM     One sentence, no benchmark names: what about machine organization
          does this paper establish?
LEVEL     Which layer changes: core / memory hierarchy / accelerator /
          interconnect / ISA contract / methodology?
AUDIENCE  Name three recent ISCA papers whose authors are the natural
          reviewers. (Cannot name three -> wrong room.)
DELTA     Against the nearest of those three: what does this design do that
          theirs cannot, stated as behavior not adjectives?
EVIDENCE  Is the evaluation instrument (simulator / RTL / FPGA / silicon
          measurement) credible for THIS claim? (See isca-experiments.)
TIMING    Can the evidence be complete 6 weeks before mid-November?
          If not, which venue's gate matches the real finish date?
ROUTE     ISCA main / ISCA industry / MICRO / HPCA / ASPLOS / defer.

Shapes with a strong ISCA record

The Influential ISCA Paper Award record (see ../../resources/exemplars/library.md) shows the venue's long-run taste. Winning shapes include a security-motivated cache redesign, a polymorphous core architecture, 3D-stacked memory organization, a datacenter power-provisioning measurement study, and a thermal-management design-space classification. Two lessons: measurement and methodology papers can be first-class ISCA contributions, and ideas that name a reusable organizing principle outlast ideas that optimize one metric.

Anti-fits that waste a cycle

  • A speedup on an unmodified commercial chip with no architectural mechanism — systems venues will treat it better.
  • A new benchmark suite with no analysis of what it reveals about designs — IISWC-shaped until the analysis exists.
  • An accelerator for workload W whose entire delta is "we specialized for W" — reviewers ask for the generalizable design insight.
  • RTL-quality engineering of a known idea — valuable, but "known idea" is the review's first line.
  • A simulation study whose conclusion depends on a fidelity level the simulator cannot support (see isca-experiments before deciding fit, not after).

Decide and record

text
[ISCA fit] strong / plausible / weak
[Center of gravity] <layer + one-sentence organizing claim>
[Nearest reviewers] <3 recent ISCA papers>
[Track] main / industry
[Fallback seat] MICRO <year> / HPCA <year> / ASPLOS <cycle> + trigger condition
[Evidence deadline] <date evidence must freeze for a mid-November submission>

Facts here are the 2026-cycle snapshot verified 2026-07-08 (../../resources/official-source-map.md); the ISCA 2027 CFP was not yet posted at check time, so treat the November seat as expected, not promised — 待核实. Scope, track structure, and topics lists are re-decided per edition: reread the live CFP's topics enumeration before declaring anything out of scope.

© 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 ISCA-Skills/skills/isca-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Isca 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.

Isca Topic Selection compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Isca Topic Selection this skillbrycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills1.2k—~1.7kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
TopicsZimoLiao/scholaraio576—~294Automated safety check: PassMIT
Topic Modelingbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills4.5k—~3.7kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Acm Workshop On Hot Topics In Networksfranklee16/academic-research-skills2231 repos~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Bestblogs Topicginobefun/BestBlogs4k—~670Automated safety check: PassNone
Zsxq Topicitwanger/toBeBetterJavaer18k—~564Automated safety check: PassNone

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Questions about Isca Topic Selection

What does Isca Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a project belongs at ISCA, the ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution, choosing between…. Isca Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a project belongs at ISCA, the ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution, choosing between ISCA's November gate and the MICRO, HPCA, and ASPLOS seats in the architecture year, and weighing the main track against the industry track.

When should I use Isca Topic Selection?

Isca Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether a project belongs at ISCA; the ACM/IEEE flagship architecture symposium — testing whether the machine itself is the contribution; choosing between ISCAs November gate and the MICRO; ASPLOS seats in the architecture year.

How do I install Isca Topic Selection in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Isca Topic Selection in Codex?

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

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

What does Isca Topic Selection need to run?

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

Does Isca 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 Isca 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 Isca Topic Selection use?

Isca 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 Isca Topic Selection use?

About 1.7k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.8k 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 Isca Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Isca Topic Selection: Topics (ZimoLiao/scholaraio, 576 stars), Topic Modeling (brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, 4.5k stars), Acm Workshop On Hot Topics In Networks (franklee16/academic-research-skills, 223 stars) and Bestblogs Topic (ginobefun/BestBlogs, 4k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Isca 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.