focs-reproducibility
Use when hardening a FOCS (IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science) paper's checkability — the theory analogue of reproducibility — via hypothesis ledgers, single-source theorem statements that cannot drift between submission and arXiv versions, audits of imported theorems, and certificates for machine-checked steps.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill focs-reproducibility --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# FOCS Reproducibility FOCS has no reproducibility checklist and asks for no artifacts (2026 CFP, checked 2026-07-08). At a proofs venue, "reproducing" a result means an independent expert can re-derive it from the paper alone. That property — checkability — is engineerable, and papers engineered for it survive both refereeing and the decade of scrutiny that follows a FOCS acceptance. Four practices below build it. ## 1. The hypothesis ledger Every assumption a theorem consumes should be visible at the theorem, not scattered across ambient conventions declared in Section 2. Keep a ledger during writing: | Hypothesis | Introduced | Used by | Discharged or standing? | |---|---|---|---| | $G$ simple, connected | §2 conventions | Thm 1, 3; Lem 4.2 | standing | | $\varepsilon < 1/\log n$ | Thm 3 statement | Lem 5.1–5.4 | standing — stated in Thm 3 ✓ | | oracle access to exact eigenvalues | §5 ¶1 (silent!) | Lem 5.3 | **must surface in Thm 3** | The audit question for each row: does the *formal statement* of every theorem that transitively needs this hypothesis mention it? Silent standing hypotheses are the most common correctness complaint theory referees file, and the cheapest to fix b
- 1. The hypothesis ledger
- 2. Statement freeze across versions
- 3. The imported-theorem audit
- 4. Certificates for computed steps
- 5. Errata as a first-class object
- Pre-freeze checkability review
extract_statements.sh — run against any two versions of the source
for src in "$1" "$2"; do
awk '/\\begin{(theorem|lemma|corollary)/,/\\end{(theorem|lemma|corollary)/' \
done
identical hashes => no drift in any formal statementWhat does the focs-reproducibility skill do?
Use when hardening a FOCS (IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science) paper's checkability — the theory analogue of reproducibility — via hypothesis ledgers, single-source theorem statements that cannot drift between submission and arXiv versions, audits of imported theorems, and certificates for machine-checked steps.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill focs-reproducibility --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 984 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.