Idea Review
Read ../references/venues.md, ../references/review-rubric.md, ../references/conference-story-patterns.md, ../references/expert-advice.md, ../references/novelty-boundary.md, and ../references/evidence-contracts.md.
Default posture: skeptical, specific, and generative.
Review Order
- State the topic, semantic unit, constraints, and strongest truthful paper type.
- Audit established mechanisms before crediting a new one.
- Identify closest topic, method, adjacent, industrial/open-source, and foundational work.
- Assign separate topic and method states from
novelty-boundary.md.
- Test the mechanism chain, rival explanations, evidence burden, and deployment realism.
- Decide whether the idea is publishable, needs a new method on the same topic, or is infeasible under current constraints.
If the contribution is framed as an abstraction, apply the Abstraction Gate from conference-story-patterns.md. Do not use abstraction language to hide an under-specified method.
Topic overlap alone cannot justify incremental or already done. Use already done only when problem, method, assumptions, and claim substantially match. A crowded topic with a distinct method may be stronger than a new topic with a familiar method.
Output
- Verdict:
promising, borderline, or not yet publishable.
- Innovation profile: paper type, topic state, method state, and one-sentence boundary.
- Strengths: only those that survive closest-work comparison.
- Fatal or major risks: distinguish problem, method, evidence, and feasibility risks.
- Mechanism test: causal chain, primary prediction, rival explanation, discriminating experiment, and falsifier.
- Story candidate: venue story pattern, systems X/Y/Z statement, closest-work contrast, and first decisive figure or experiment.
- Salvage path: concrete next move.
When the topic matters but the proposed method collapses into a strong baseline, route to researchstack-method-synthesis and preserve the topic. Recommend a new topic only after the relevant method space is audited and no credible candidate survives.
Do not offer fake encouragement, but do not use novelty review only as a veto. A senior coauthor must explain how a weak idea could become a stronger method, measurement, system, control, co-design, or artifact paper.
1---2name: researchstack-idea-review3description: Skeptical but generative review for systems, networking, and AI ideas. Use to judge topic significance, method novelty, mechanism plausibility, evidence burden, scope, and venue fit without treating a crowded topic as automatic rejection.4---56# Idea Review78Read [../references/venues.md](../references/venues.md), [../references/review-rubric.md](../references/review-rubric.md), [../references/conference-story-patterns.md](../references/conference-story-patterns.md), [../references/expert-advice.md](../references/expert-advice.md), [../references/novelty-boundary.md](../references/novelty-boundary.md), and [../references/evidence-contracts.md](../references/evidence-contracts.md).910Default posture: skeptical, specific, and generative.1112## Review Order13141. State the topic, semantic unit, constraints, and strongest truthful paper type.152. Audit established mechanisms before crediting a new one.163. Identify closest topic, method, adjacent, industrial/open-source, and foundational work.174. Assign separate topic and method states from `novelty-boundary.md`.185. Test the mechanism chain, rival explanations, evidence burden, and deployment realism.196. Decide whether the idea is publishable, needs a new method on the same topic, or is infeasible under current constraints.2021If the contribution is framed as an abstraction, apply the Abstraction Gate from `conference-story-patterns.md`. Do not use abstraction language to hide an under-specified method.2223Topic overlap alone cannot justify `incremental` or `already done`. Use `already done` only when problem, method, assumptions, and claim substantially match. A crowded topic with a distinct method may be stronger than a new topic with a familiar method.2425## Output2627- **Verdict**: `promising`, `borderline`, or `not yet publishable`.28- **Innovation profile**: paper type, topic state, method state, and one-sentence boundary.29- **Strengths**: only those that survive closest-work comparison.30- **Fatal or major risks**: distinguish problem, method, evidence, and feasibility risks.31- **Mechanism test**: causal chain, primary prediction, rival explanation, discriminating experiment, and falsifier.32- **Story candidate**: venue story pattern, systems X/Y/Z statement, closest-work contrast, and first decisive figure or experiment.33- **Salvage path**: concrete next move.3435When the topic matters but the proposed method collapses into a strong baseline, route to `researchstack-method-synthesis` and preserve the topic. Recommend a new topic only after the relevant method space is audited and no credible candidate survives.3637Do not offer fake encouragement, but do not use novelty review only as a veto. A senior coauthor must explain how a weak idea could become a stronger method, measurement, system, control, co-design, or artifact paper.
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