idea

Idea

Use this skill to turn the current baseline and problem frame into concrete, literature-grounded, frontier-aware, testable directions. The goal is to choose the next executable research route, not to maximize brainstorming volume or reward shallow novelty.

When startup_contract.need_research_paper = false and the quest already has a concrete optimization handle, idea may stop after selecting or seeding a direction and then hand off into optimize instead of insisting on the full paper-oriented ideation loop. In that algorithm-first case, idea should usually produce a small method-brief frontier and then defer candidate ranking, promotion, and bounded search to optimize. When doing that handoff, prefer the brief-shaping discipline later used by optimize: clarify the bottleneck and constraints, keep only a small differentiated 2-3 option slate, and hand off a recommended brief rather than a pile of loose intuitions.

Match signals

Use idea when:

• the accepted baseline and metric contract already exist, but the next route is still unresolved
• the current line failed and the quest needs a new falsifiable direction
• the problem is not "build a new module" but "decide what kind of route should be tried next"
• the current bottleneck might be a mechanism problem, an objective mismatch, a measurement/evaluator problem, or an infrastructure constraint that changes what should be tested next

Do not use idea when:

• the baseline gate is still unresolved
• the current board state is too stale or conflicting to say what the mainline actually is
• the next step is already obviously write, review, or finalize

If the current board cannot be compressed cleanly, route through decision or intake-audit before widening the frontier.

One-sentence summary

Turn the current objective, board state, and bottleneck into a small differentiated frontier, then select the next falsifiable route.

Control workflow

1. Write the objective contract. Use references/objective-contract-template.md. Make the real target, trusted proxies, false-progress signals, and hard constraints explicit before generating ideas. Default durable path: artifacts/idea/objective_contract.md.
2. Write the current board packet. Use references/current-board-packet-template.md. Compress the incumbent, latest decisive result, active blocker, and stale routes-to-ignore into one current state surface. Default durable path: artifacts/idea/current_board_packet.md.
3. Identify the important contradiction and plausible novelty source. Use references/high-value-idea-sourcing.md. Start from the most important unresolved contradiction, anomaly, bottleneck, or failure region rather than from a preferred mechanism.
4. Run a broad, history-aware literature search before proposing serious ideas. Use references/related-work-playbook.md, references/research-history-playbook.md, and references/literature-survey-template.md. Cover direct in-domain frontier papers, foundational papers, strongest nearby competitors, and cross-domain papers whose mechanisms may translate into the current task. If the runtime prompt explicitly enables cross-quest recall, follow that injected policy before going outside; otherwise stay inside the current quest's memory/artifacts and explicit user-provided files. See playbook §2.1 for the full source-order protocol. If DeepXiv is available, use it for broad paper-centric discovery and citation expansion; otherwise use search engines and citation chaining directly. Do not promote or even seriously shortlist a new idea until the durable survey and closest-prior-work comparison are updated enough to judge novelty and feasibility honestly.
5. Extract the limitation pattern and novelty opportunity from the survey. Distinguish what is already saturated, what is only a decorative tweak, and what could still support a differentiated route. Default against small local edits unless they are explicitly shown to be the highest-value surviving route.
6. Choose the idea family mix. At minimum, decide whether the current pass should consider some mix of:
   • mechanism-family routes
   • objective-family routes
   • measurement-family routes
   • infrastructure-family routes
7. Run bounded brainstorming. Use references/controlled-brainstorming-playbook.md when the route is not already obvious. Generate a small, meaningfully different slate rather than a pile of micro-variants. Prefer candidate families that could change the conclusion, capability boundary, or paper value materially, not just move a knob.
8. Write a compact pre-idea draft for the serious surviving candidates. Use references/pre-idea-draft-template.md. Normally write drafts for the top 1-3 candidates, not for the whole raw slate. The draft must surface hidden assumptions, local-optimum lock-in risk, strongest outside-family alternative, strongest rejection case, and the cheapest falsification path before any formal idea submission. Default durable path per candidate: artifacts/idea/pre_idea_drafts/<candidate_id>.md.
9. Filter aggressively. Use references/selection-gate.md. Remove candidates that only improve a surrogate, reopen a stale route without new evidence, violate leakage or submission-time boundaries, or lack a cheap falsification path.
10. Select and hand off. The selected package must include the route, why now, novelty type, main risk, anti-win condition, core hypothesis, mechanism sketch, strongest falsification experiment, minimal validation, abandonment condition, and the next stage.