sosp-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether a systems project is SOSP-shaped — a built and measured artifact embodying an extractable principle in operating and distributed systems — or better routed to OSDI, EuroSys, USENIX ATC, NSDI, FAST, ASPLOS, VLDB, MLSys, or HotOS, and when to make that call in the project's life.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill sosp-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.
# SOSP Topic Selection Use this months before any deadline, when the routing decision is still cheap. SOSP solicits work on "the design, implementation, analysis, evaluation, and deployment of computer systems software" (2026 CFP at `sigops.org/s/conferences/sosp/2026/cfp.html`, checked 2026-07-08) — a broad charter that in practice is filtered through one question: *is there an operating-systems principle here, embodied in something built and measured?* ## The three-part SOSP shape test 1. **Principle** — an extractable insight that outlives the artifact. Someone should be able to apply it while building a different system. "We made X fast" is not a principle; "X can be fast because responsibility R can move below interface I" is. 2. **Embodiment** — a real system that exists and runs. SOSP is hostile to simulation-only and design-only papers outside genuinely unusual cases; the venue's culture is build-and-measure. 3. **Evidence at the claim's scale** — an evaluation that could survive `sosp-experiments`. A principle about datacenter tails needs datacenter-shaped evidence. A project passing all three is SOSP-shaped regardless of its subdomain: kernels, virtualization, distributed
- The three-part SOSP shape test
- Routing table
- Timing the call
- Anti-patterns this venue punishes
- Output format
What does the sosp-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether a systems project is SOSP-shaped — a built and measured artifact embodying an extractable principle in operating and distributed systems — or better routed to OSDI, EuroSys, USENIX ATC, NSDI, FAST, ASPLOS, VLDB, MLSys, or HotOS, and when to make that call in the project's life.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill sosp-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 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.