aris-novelty-check

name	aris-novelty-check
description	Verify research idea novelty against recent literature. Use when user says "novelty check", "check novelty", "has anyone done this", or wants to verify a research idea is novel before implementing. Ported from wanshuiyin/Auto-claude-code-research-in-sleep (ARIS) — methodology only, Claude-Code-specific MCP deps stripped for VS Code Copilot.

Novelty Check Skill

Check whether a proposed method/idea has already been done in the literature.

The user will provide the method or idea description as part of their request.

Instructions

Given a method description, systematically verify its novelty:

Phase A: Extract Key Claims

1. Read the user's method description
2. Identify 3-5 core technical claims that would need to be novel:
   • What is the method?
   • What problem does it solve?
   • What is the mechanism?
   • What makes it different from obvious baselines?

Phase B: Multi-Source Literature Search

For EACH core claim, search using all available web sources:

1. Web Search:

   • Search arXiv, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar
   • Use specific technical terms from the claim
   • Try at least 3 different query formulations per claim
   • Include year filters for recent work (last 2 years)

2. Known paper databases: Check against:

   • Recent conference proceedings (ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, CVPR, etc.)
   • Recent arXiv preprints

3. Read abstracts: For each potentially overlapping paper, fetch its abstract and related work section

Phase C: Self-Review Verification

After gathering the literature, perform a critical self-review of novelty:

1. Write a dossier (e.g., NOVELTY_DOSSIER.md) containing:

   • The proposed method description
   • All papers found in Phase B
   • The question: "Is this method novel? What is the closest prior work? What is the delta?"

2. Review the dossier critically, acting as a skeptical reviewer:

   • For each claim, identify the closest prior work
   • Determine the actual delta (what is genuinely new vs. incremental)
   • Consider whether a reviewer would cite the prior work as making this redundant

Phase D: Novelty Report

Output a structured report:

## Novelty Check Report

### Proposed Method
[1-2 sentence description]

### Core Claims
1. [Claim 1] — Novelty: HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW — Closest: [paper]
2. [Claim 2] — Novelty: HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW — Closest: [paper]
...

### Closest Prior Work
| Paper | Year | Venue | Overlap | Key Difference |
|-------|------|-------|---------|----------------|

### Overall Novelty Assessment
- Score: X/10
- Recommendation: PROCEED / PROCEED WITH CAUTION / ABANDON
- Key differentiator: [what makes this unique, if any]
- Risk: [what a reviewer would cite as prior work]

### Suggested Positioning
[How to frame the contribution to maximize novelty perception]

Important Rules

• Be BRUTALLY honest — false novelty claims waste months of research time
• "Applying X to Y" is NOT novel unless the application reveals surprising insights
• Check both the method AND the experimental setting for novelty
• If the method is not novel but the FINDING would be, say so explicitly
• Always check the most recent 6 months of arXiv — the field moves fast
• Anti-hallucination for Closest Prior Work. Never fabricate arXiv IDs, DOIs, or titles from memory. Every paper in the prior-work table must be verified via web search. If a paper cannot be verified, tag it [UNVERIFIED] and surface the uncertainty rather than dropping it.