A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a project belongs at UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique, toolkit, or hardware that works), making the…

MITAuto-check passedWriting & Content

Install Uist Topic Selection

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

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills uist-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/UIST-Skills/skills/uist-topic-selection .claude/skills/uist-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
uist-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.9k tokens
SKILL.md length
918 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 UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique, toolkit, or hardware that works), making the…

  • Works in 3 steps: "We built a VR classroom and studied 40… → **"We invented a way to print… → **"Our LLM agent completes GUI tasks…
  • Deciding whether a project belongs at UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique
  • SKILL.md covers The artifact-subtraction test, CHI vs UIST: make the call,…, Fit ledger and Where UIST-adjacent work…, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Uist Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a project belongs at UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique, toolkit, or hardware that works), making the CHI-vs-UIST routing call explicitly, and re-routing to CSCW, IMWUT, TEI, ISMAR, IUI, or TOCHI when the artifact is not the contribution.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.9k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Writing & Content, covering Creative writing and fiction. 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 UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique
  • Hardware that works)
  • Making the CHI-vs-UIST routing call explicitly
  • Re-routing to CSCW

Example prompts

  • “/uist-topic-selection”

Workflow steps

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

  1. "We built a VR classroom and studied 40 students learning in it." Subtract
  2. **"We invented a way to print stretchable circuits on fabric with a consumer
  3. **"Our LLM agent completes GUI tasks from natural-language instructions; we

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

Uist Topic Selection loads about 1.9k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 83 tokens; SKILL.md has 918 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
~1.9k

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). 918 words, ~1,919 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/uist-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
uist-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether a project belongs at UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique, toolkit, or hardware that works), making the CHI-vs-UIST routing call explicitly, and re-routing to CSCW, IMWUT, TEI, ISMAR, IUI, or TOCHI when the artifact is not the contribution.

UIST Topic Selection

UIST publishes papers whose contribution is an interface artifact: a new interaction technique, an enabling piece of hardware, a toolkit or authoring system, or an algorithm that makes a previously impossible interaction possible. The venue grew out of demo culture and still reviews like it — the implicit first question is "what did you build, and can I imagine holding it?" Use this skill before any UIST plan is made; the March deadline punishes late routing discoveries.

The artifact-subtraction test

Delete the system from the paper and see what survives:

  • If what survives is a finding about people (how users behave, adopt, trust, collaborate), the system was an instrument, not a contribution — that is a CHI or CSCW paper.
  • If what survives is nothing, because every claim is about what the artifact enables and how it is engineered, you are holding a UIST candidate.
  • If what survives is a model or algorithm evaluated offline with no interactive loop, consider IUI, an ML venue, or a domain venue instead.

CHI vs UIST: make the call, don't drift into it

Both are SIGCHI venues, both use PCS, and many projects could be dressed for either. Decide on contribution shape, not on which deadline is closer:

QuestionPoints to UISTPoints to CHI
What is novel?The technique, device, toolkit, or enabling pipelineThe empirical insight, theory, or design knowledge
What is the evidence spine?It runs: technical evaluation, demo, video figureStudy rigor: participants, methods, analysis
Who must be convinced?Systems builders who will reuse or extend the artifactA mixed jury weighing study quality and framing
Weakest section right now?A thin user study is survivable if the engineering is deepA thin study is usually fatal
Natural conference moment?A demo people queue forA talk people argue about

An honest tie-breaker: if your video figure would be boring — nothing moves, nothing is manipulated, nothing responds — UIST reviewers will feel the same way about the system.

Fit ledger

Score each row 0-2 and be suspicious of any total under 8:

text
[ ] Enabling novelty: the artifact does something no published system does (not "does it better on a benchmark")
[ ] Technical depth: there is a mechanism, algorithm, or fabrication method worth two pages of implementation
[ ] Demonstrability: the contribution is visible in under three minutes of video
[ ] Evaluation match: the planned evidence measures what the artifact claims (see uist-experiments)
[ ] Community reuse: a builder could take the technique/toolkit and make something you didn't anticipate
[ ] Timing: buildable and evaluable before the late-March abstract/paper deadlines

Where UIST-adjacent work actually belongs

  • Deployment and appropriation studies of an interactive system → CSCW or CHI; UIST wants the system's construction, not its month-three usage patterns.
  • Sensing without an interactive application (activity recognition, physiological pipelines) → IMWUT/UbiComp.
  • Tangibles and fabrication where the argument is design-theoretic → TEI or DIS; keep fabrication at UIST when the contribution is the enabling process or machine.
  • AR/VR perception or display optics without an interface contribution → ISMAR or IEEE VR.
  • Intelligent interfaces where the model is the contribution and the interface is a wrapper → IUI, or an ML venue with a demo track.
  • Mature systems with longitudinal evaluation that outgrew a 10-page conference paper → TOCHI.

The Lasting Impact lineage is a useful calibration set: mobile sensing hardware (Hinckley et al., UIST 2000), multi-user touch hardware (DiamondTouch, UIST 2001), gesture text entry (SHARK2, UIST 2004) — every one is an artifact a reader can picture operating. Benchmark your idea against that lineage in ../../resources/exemplars/library.md.

Show full SKILL.md (421 more words)Show less

Three routing vignettes

Concrete cases, because the boundary is learned by example:

  1. "We built a VR classroom and studied 40 students learning in it." Subtract the artifact: a finding about learning in VR survives. Unless the classroom required new rendering, tracking, or authoring machinery worth two implementation pages, this is CHI (Learning subcommunity) or a learning-technology venue. The UIST version of this project would contribute the authoring system that let a teacher build such classrooms without programmers.
  2. "We invented a way to print stretchable circuits on fabric with a consumer printer, and made four demo garments." Nothing survives subtraction — the process is the paper. The four garments are the evaluation breadth, and the technical characterization (resistance under strain, wash cycles) is the evidence. Textbook UIST; TEI only if the argument shifts to design theory.
  3. "Our LLM agent completes GUI tasks from natural-language instructions; we benchmarked it on 500 tasks." The judgment call of the current era. If the contribution is benchmark accuracy, it drifts toward an ML/agents venue. It becomes UIST-shaped when the paper contributes the interactive machinery: mixed-initiative repair when the agent stalls, user-visible plans, an architecture others can build interfaces on — and evaluates those interactions, not just task completion.

Timing the decision

Routing is cheapest at conception and expensive after a rejection. Three checkpoints:

  • At project pitch: run the subtraction test on the planned paper, not the planned system — labs routinely build UIST systems and then write CHI papers about them by accident.
  • At feature freeze (see uist-workflow): re-run the fit ledger; if technical depth scored 0-1, the short-paper category or an adjunct track is the honest landing zone.
  • After reviews: rejections phrased as "the evaluation doesn't support the claims" are often routing errors in disguise — reviewers asked for the evidence the other venue's version of the paper would have carried.

Scope notes for the 2026 cycle

  • The 2026 CFP was verified via search renderings on 2026-07-08 (direct fetches were blocked); the Papers deadline (March 31, 2026) has passed, so a routing decision made today targets the adjunct tracks of UIST 2026 — Demos and Posters welcome work already shown elsewhere — or the UIST 2027 Papers cycle.
  • Short papers (5 pages) exist for smaller-but-complete contributions; routing a half-built system to a short paper is legitimate, padding it to 10 pages is not.
  • Scope vocabulary drifts with the field (2026 chairs span video accessibility, human-AI systems, fabrication, and programming tools — a hint about breadth); reread the current topics list rather than assuming last decade's hardware focus.

Output format

text
[UIST fit] strong / plausible / re-route
[Artifact-subtraction result] <what survives without the system>
[CHI-vs-UIST call] UIST / CHI / genuinely either — with the deciding row
[Fit ledger] <score>/12 with weakest two rows
[Re-route candidate] <venue + why its reviewers are the right jury>
[Next skill] uist-experiments (evidence plan) or uist-workflow (calendar)

© 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 UIST-Skills/skills/uist-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

Uist 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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Novel Arteternityspring/shuohao-skills4.3k—~1.1kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
SepiaNanako0129/sepia3k—~3.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Questions about Uist Topic Selection

What does Uist Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether a project belongs at UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique, toolkit, or hardware that works), making the…. Uist Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether a project belongs at UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique, toolkit, or hardware that works), making the CHI-vs-UIST routing call explicitly, and re-routing to CSCW, IMWUT, TEI, ISMAR, IUI, or TOCHI when the artifact is not the contribution.

When should I use Uist Topic Selection?

Uist Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether a project belongs at UIST — testing it against the interface-systems contribution bar (novel technique; hardware that works); making the CHI-vs-UIST routing call explicitly; re-routing to CSCW.

How do I install Uist Topic Selection in Claude Code?

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

How do I install Uist Topic Selection in Codex?

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

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

What does Uist Topic Selection need to run?

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

Does Uist 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 Uist 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 Uist Topic Selection use?

Uist 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 Uist Topic Selection use?

About 1.9k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 7.7k 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 Uist Topic Selection?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Uist Topic Selection: Story Multi-Perspective Review (zenstory-ai/oh-story-claudecode, 7.4k stars), Short Web Fiction Trend Scan (zenstory-ai/oh-story-claudecode, 7.4k stars), InkOS Creative Harness (Narcooo/inkos, 10k stars) and Novel Art (eternityspring/shuohao-skills, 4.3k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Uist 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.