tacas-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether a formal-methods / verification project belongs at TACAS (ETAPS) or a sibling like CAV, VMCAI, FMCAD, SPIN, or a journal, AND — distinctively — which of TACAS's four categories (research, case-study, regular tool, tool-demonstration) it fits, plus whether the work is a SV-COMP competition contribution rather than a paper.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill tacas-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.
# TACAS Topic Selection Decide two things before drafting: **is this TACAS**, and **which TACAS category**. TACAS — Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems — is the ETAPS conference at the **tool-and-algorithm end of verification**: model checking, program analysis, SMT and decision procedures, testing and synthesis, and the systems that implement them. Its defining feature versus its siblings is that a **usable, evaluated tool is a first-class contribution**, backed by a mandatory artifact. A brilliant idea with no tool and no experiment can still be a research paper, but a paper that is really a benchmark ranking is a **SV-COMP** contribution, not a TACAS paper. ## First cut: is this TACAS, or a sibling? TACAS overlaps heavily with the other verification venues, so decide by **emphasis and calendar**, not by topic alone. | Signal in your project | Better home | Why | |---|---|---| | A tool or algorithm for constructing/analysing systems, with real experiments, ETAPS timing fits | **TACAS** | Tools-and-algorithms core; mandatory-artifact culture; LNCS open access | | Deep new verification *theory/algorithm*, breadth of formal methods, larger page room | *
- First cut: is this TACAS, or a sibling?
- Second cut: which of the four categories?
- Contribution shapes TACAS rewards
- The tool-vs-research and re-label tests
- Cheap reconnaissance before committing
- Decision procedure
What does the tacas-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether a formal-methods / verification project belongs at TACAS (ETAPS) or a sibling like CAV, VMCAI, FMCAD, SPIN, or a journal, AND — distinctively — which of TACAS's four categories (research, case-study, regular tool, tool-demonstration) it fits, plus whether the work is a SV-COMP competition contribution rather than a paper.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill tacas-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.