Override for Codex users who want Gemini, not a second Codex agent, to act as the reviewer. Install this package after skills/skills-codex/*.

Research Idea Creator

Generate publishable research ideas for: $ARGUMENTS

Overview

Given a broad research direction from the user, systematically generate, validate, and rank concrete research ideas. This skill composes with /research-lit, /novelty-check, and /research-review to form a complete idea discovery pipeline.

Constants

• PILOT_MAX_HOURS = 2 — Skip any pilot estimated to take > 2 hours per GPU. Flag as "needs manual pilot".

• PILOT_TIMEOUT_HOURS = 3 — Hard timeout: kill pilots exceeding 3 hours. Collect partial results if available.

• MAX_PILOT_IDEAS = 3 — Pilot at most 3 ideas in parallel. Additional ideas are validated on paper only.

• MAX_TOTAL_GPU_HOURS = 8 — Total GPU budget for all pilots combined.

• REVIEWER_MODEL = gemini-review — Gemini reviewer invoked through the local gemini-review MCP bridge for brainstorming and critique. Set GEMINI_REVIEW_MODEL if you need a specific Gemini model override.

• OUTPUT_DIR = idea-stage/ — Directory for idea output files.

💡 Override via argument, e.g., /idea-creator "topic" — pilot budget: 4h per idea, 20h total.

Workflow

Phase 1: Landscape Survey (5-10 min)

Map the research area to understand what exists and where the gaps are.

1. Scan local paper library first: Check papers/ and literature/ in the project directory for existing PDFs. Read first 3 pages of relevant papers to build a baseline understanding before searching online. This avoids re-discovering what the user already knows.

2. Search recent literature using WebSearch:

   • Top venues in the last 2 years (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, etc.)
   • Recent arXiv preprints (last 6 months)
   • Use 5+ different query formulations
   • Read abstracts and introductions of the top 10-15 papers

3. Build a landscape map:

   • Group papers by sub-direction / approach
   • Identify what has been tried and what hasn't
   • Note recurring limitations mentioned in "Future Work" sections
   • Flag any open problems explicitly stated by multiple papers

4. Identify structural gaps:

   • Methods that work in domain A but haven't been tried in domain B
   • Contradictory findings between papers (opportunity for resolution)
   • Assumptions that everyone makes but nobody has tested
   • Scaling regimes that haven't been explored
   • Diagnostic questions that nobody has asked

Phase 2: Idea Generation (brainstorm with external LLM)

Use the local gemini-review MCP bridge for divergent thinking:

mcp__gemini-review__review_start:
  prompt: |
    You are a senior ML researcher brainstorming research ideas.

    Research direction: [user's direction]

    Here is the current landscape:
    [paste landscape map from Phase 1]

    Key gaps identified:
    [paste gaps from Phase 1]

    Generate 8-12 concrete research ideas. For each idea:
    1. One-sentence summary
    2. Core hypothesis (what you expect to find and why)
    3. Minimum viable experiment (what's the cheapest way to test this?)
    4. Expected contribution type: empirical finding / new method / theoretical result / diagnostic
    5. Risk level: LOW (likely works) / MEDIUM (50-50) / HIGH (speculative)
    6. Estimated effort: days / weeks / months

    Prioritize ideas that are:
    - Testable with moderate compute (8x RTX 3090 or less)
    - Likely to produce a clear positive OR negative result (both are publishable)
    - Not "apply X to Y" unless the application reveals genuinely surprising insights
    - Differentiated from the 10-15 papers above

    Be creative but grounded. A great idea is one where the answer matters regardless of which way it goes.

After this start call, immediately save the returned jobId and poll mcp__gemini-review__review_status with a bounded waitSeconds until done=true. Treat the completed status payload's response as the brainstorm output, and save the completed threadId for follow-up critique in Phase 4.

Phase 3: Mechanical consolidation + objective feasibility gate

This phase does NOT judge idea quality, novelty, or impact — those are the job of the Phase-4 cross-model reviewer (a different model family). Dropping ideas here on a same-family novelty or impact call would pre-filter the reviewer's input with same-family judgment — the opposite of why ARIS uses a cross-model reviewer at all. Phase 3 only (a) clusters near-duplicate ideas and (b) drops ideas that are OBJECTIVELY out of budget; everything else passes through ANNOTATED, not eliminated.

1. Objective feasibility gate (safe to gate here): drop an idea ONLY on a mechanical, budget-based fact — estimated compute > 1 week of available GPU time, OR a dataset that is provably unavailable. Do NOT drop on "implementation looks complex" — annotate complexity instead.

2. Novelty signal — ANNOTATE, do not eliminate: do 2-3 targeted searches and attach a prior_work note (what looks related, with links). This is input for the Phase-4 reviewer, not a filter; full /novelty-check runs in Phase 4. Do NOT drop an idea here because it "might already be done."

3. Impact signal — ANNOTATE, do not eliminate: attach a one-line so_what note (why the result would matter either way). Do NOT drop on a same-family "a reviewer wouldn't care" call — that is exactly what the Phase-4 cross-model reviewer is for.

Every feasible, non-duplicate idea — with its prior_work and so_what annotations — proceeds to Phase 4, where the cross-model reviewer does the quality/novelty narrowing.

Phase 4: Deep Validation (for top ideas)

For each surviving idea, run a deeper evaluation:

1. Novelty check: Use the /novelty-check workflow (multi-source search + Gemini cross-verification) for each idea

2. Critical review: Use mcp__gemini-review__review_reply_start with the saved completed threadId:

   mcp__gemini-review__review_reply_start:
     threadId: [saved completed threadId from Phase 2]
     prompt: |
       Here are our top ideas after filtering:
       [paste surviving ideas with novelty check results]
   
       For each, play devil's advocate:
       - What's the strongest objection a reviewer would raise?
       - What's the most likely failure mode?
       - How would you rank these for a top venue submission?
       - Which 2-3 would you actually work on?
   

   After this start call, immediately save the returned jobId and poll mcp__gemini-review__review_status with a bounded waitSeconds until done=true. Treat the completed status payload's response as the follow-up critique.

3. Combine rankings: Merge your assessment with Gemini's ranking. Select top 2-3 ideas for pilot experiments.

Phase 5: Parallel Pilot Experiments (for top 2-3 ideas)

Before committing to a full research effort, run cheap pilot experiments to get empirical signal. This is the key differentiator from paper-only validation.

1. Design pilots: For each top idea, define the minimal experiment that would give a positive or negative signal:

   • Single seed, small scale (e.g., small dataset subset, fewer epochs)
   • Target: 30 min - PILOT_MAX_HOURS per pilot on 1 GPU
   • Estimate GPU-hours BEFORE launching. If estimated time > PILOT_MAX_HOURS, reduce scale (fewer epochs, smaller subset) or flag as "needs manual pilot"
   • Clear success metric defined upfront (e.g., "if metric improves by > 1%, signal is positive")

2. Deploy in parallel: Use /run-experiment to launch pilots on different GPUs simultaneously:

   GPU 0: Pilot for Idea 1
   GPU 1: Pilot for Idea 2
   GPU 2: Pilot for Idea 3
   

   Use run_in_background: true to launch all at once.

3. Collect results: Use /monitor-experiment to check progress. If any pilot exceeds PILOT_TIMEOUT_HOURS, ki