icalp-topic-selection
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.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill icalp-topic-selection --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.
# 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 result | Track | |---|---| | A faster algorithm, a better approximation ratio, a new data structure, a fine-grained bound | **A**
- Two decisions, not one
- Track A vs Track B
- ICALP vs the US theory venues and journals
- Contribution shapes ICALP rewards
- The re-route tests
- Cheap reconnaissance before committing
- Decision procedure
What does the icalp-topic-selection skill do?
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.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill icalp-topic-selection --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.