novelty-assessment

The novelty-assessment skill evaluates research ideas by performing multi-round literature searches and applying a harsh critic persona to determine if an idea offers a unique contribution.

1.1K
Installs
3
Use cases
4/10
Quality

Is novelty-assessment safe to install?

Review the source first

Review the source first: our audit of novelty-assessment's source files found 2 shell commands, 0 external URLs, file reads and writes (high risk). Every command and URL listed appears verbatim in the skill's source. The skill executes local Python scripts and writes output to a JSON file.

How we audit skills: our security review methodology.

Who is this skill for?

Researchers and academics who need to verify the originality of a research proposal before committing to a project.

What can you do with it?

  • Identifying overlaps between a proposed research idea and existing literature.
  • Generating a structured novelty report for research projects.
  • Positioning a novel idea against existing papers for related work sections.

How good is this skill?

Quality score: 4/10. The skill provides clear instructions and a defined workflow. It lacks specific API keys or environment configuration details for the search scripts.

What does the skill file contain?

SKILL.md
# Novelty Assessment

Rigorously assess whether a research idea is novel through systematic literature search.

## Input

- `$0` — Research idea description, title, or JSON file

## Scripts

### Automated novelty check
```bash
python ~/.claude/skills/idea-generation/scripts/novelty_check.py \
  --idea "Your research idea description" \
  --max-rounds 10 --output novelty_report.json
```

### Literature search
```bash
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_semantic_scholar.py \
  --query "relevant search query" --max-results 10
```

## References

- Assessment prompts and criteria:...

Frequently asked questions

How many search rounds does the skill perform?

The skill performs a minimum of 3 search rounds and up to 10 rounds.

What criteria does the skill use to determine novelty?

The skill uses a harsh critic persona to ensure the idea offers a meaningfully different approach, formulation, or insight compared to existing literature.

Which databases does the skill search?

The skill searches Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and OpenAlex.

Data sourced from lingzhi227/agent-research-skills on GitHub. Install counts from skills.sh. The summary and security audit are derived from the skill's source files: every command and URL listed appears verbatim in the source.

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