stoc-related-work
Use when positioning a STOC (ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing) paper against the theory literature — tracing bound-improvement lineages, citing conference/journal/preprint version pairs correctly, handling concurrent arXiv and ECCC work, and keeping self-citation double-blind-safe.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill stoc-related-work --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.
# STOC Related Work Theory positioning is quantitative: reviewers expect the paper to place its bounds in an explicit lineage ("[A] gave $O(n^2)$; [B] improved to $O(n \log n)$ under assumption X; we remove X and reach $O(n)$"), and they check the lineage against their own memory of it. Errors here — a missed improvement, a misquoted exponent, a result attributed to the journal version's year instead of the conference announcement — are among the fastest credibility losses available at this venue. ## The lanes a STOC reviewer checks | Lane | What must be covered | Typical miss | |---|---|---| | The direct lineage | Every prior bound on your exact problem, with its model | Quoting the weakest prior bound to inflate the delta | | The barrier literature | Known obstructions your result confronts (relativization, natural proofs, hardness reductions, integrality gaps) | Claiming a breakthrough while silent on why the barrier does not apply | | Neighboring models | The same question in weaker/stronger models (randomized vs. deterministic, static vs. dynamic, classical vs. quantum) | "First" claims that are only first in one cell of the model grid | | Technique ancestry | Where your machi
- The lanes a STOC reviewer checks
- Version-aware citation, a theory-specific craft
- Concurrent and independent work
- Double-blind self-positioning
- Building the comparison honestly
- The deadline-week sweep, as a procedure
- Cycle-volatility warnings
- Output format
What does the stoc-related-work skill do?
Use when positioning a STOC (ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing) paper against the theory literature — tracing bound-improvement lineages, citing conference/journal/preprint version pairs correctly, handling concurrent arXiv and ECCC work, and keeping self-citation double-blind-safe.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill stoc-related-work --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.