focs-writing-style
Use when drafting or revising a FOCS (IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science) paper — making the first ten pages carry the whole case to a broad theory committee, pairing informal and formal theorem statements, keeping single-column 11-point prose readable, and writing double-blind-safe self-references.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill focs-writing-style --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 Writing Style FOCS submissions carry no length cap, and the CFP encourages submitting the full version of the paper — but everything outside the abstract, the references, and the **first ten pages** is read only at the committee's discretion (FOCS 2026 CFP, checked 2026-07-08). Style at this venue is therefore an exercise in front-loading: the opening ten pages must let a committee member from a different corner of TCS decide the paper's fate fairly, even if they never turn to page eleven. ## Budgeting the guaranteed pages A budget that survives contact with real papers: | Pages | Content | Failure mode it prevents | |---|---|---| | 1–1.5 | Problem, headline theorem(s) informally, why they matter | Reviewer cannot state your result after page 2 | | 1.5–3 | Context: prior bounds, the obstacle, your delta stated precisely | "Novelty unclear" from a non-specialist | | 3–6 | Technical overview: the proof's actual ideas, with real definitions | "Contribution may be incremental" — ideas were invisible | | 6–9.5 | Formal statements of all results; proof of one representative lemma in full | Committee cannot check that formality matches the informal claims | | 9.5–10 | Organization
- Budgeting the guaranteed pages
- The informal/formal pairing
- Prose calibration for a cross-area committee
- Double-blind prose
- Abstract anatomy
- Notation economy
- Revision pass order
What does the focs-writing-style skill do?
Use when drafting or revising a FOCS (IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science) paper — making the first ten pages carry the whole case to a broad theory committee, pairing informal and formal theorem statements, keeping single-column 11-point prose readable, and writing double-blind-safe self-references.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill focs-writing-style --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 909 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.