End-to-end research ideation pipeline: literature grounding → multi-track idea generation (3 personas: innovator/pragmatist/critic) → iterative refinement → ELO tournament ranking → update evo-memory (IDE) → user selects direction → expand into manuscript-quality proposal. Use when: user wants to fi

Research Ideation From research goal to ranked ideas and a detailed proposal. When to Use User wants to find a research direction or brainstorm research ideas User wants to evaluate whether an idea is novel or worth pursuing User wants to rank or compare multiple research ideas User wants to generate a research proposal from an idea When NOT to Use Finding/reading papers → use paper navigator Literature survey report → use research survey Planning a paper (story design, experiment plan) → use paper planning Step 0: Load Prior Knowledge from evo memory Before any ideation begins , load Ideation Memory (M I) from prior research cycles: 1. Read M I at /memory/ideation memory.md (refer to evo memory skill) 2. Select the top 2 entries (k I=2) most relevant to the user's current goal by comparing each entry's Summary and Retrieval Tags against the goal 3. Feasible directions from prior cycles → use as seeds in Step 3 (incorporate as candidate research directions alongside new ones) 4. Unsuccessful directions marked as fundamental failures → use during idea pruning in Step 4 (prune any idea that matches a fundamental failure pattern) 5. If M I doesn't exist yet (first cycle), skip this step This step prevents repeating known dead ends and builds on prior successes across research cycles. Step 1: Define a Long Term Research Goal Start with a goal that has both scientific and practical value. Ambitious enough for multiple papers, concrete enough to guide daily decisions. Ask: "What is the ultimate form of this research direction? What would the world look like if this problem were fully solved?" Step 2: Literature Grounding (via paper navigator) Invoke paper navigator (Workflow 9: Ideation Support) to collect 30 50 relevant papers. Do NOT skip this step or substitute with general knowledge — ideas must be grounded in real papers. CRITICAL: All paper discovery in this step MUST use the paper navigator skill and its scripts (scholar search, citation traverse, arxiv monitor, recommend, etc.). Using WebSearch, WebFetch, or any generic web search tool for finding papers is PROHIBITED. Generic web search returns blog posts, news articles, and low quality results — only paper navigator provides access to Semantic Scholar, arXiv, citation graph traversal, and academic recommendations needed for rigorous literature grounding. Build Challenge Insight Tree From the collected papers, construct a challenge insight tree — a many to many mapping between technical challenges and the insights/techniques that address them: Extract challenges : From each paper, what technical problem does it solve? Extract insights : What technique or key idea does it use? Map connections : Which insights address which challenges? How this drives ideation : Challenges with few insights → unsolved problem (candidate for Step 3) Insights not yet applied to a challenge → cross domain transfer opportunity (candidate for Step 4) Challenges with many insights → well studied, avoid unless you have a fundamentally new angle Also generate a condensed literature review synthesis as context for idea generation (for full surveys use research survey ). See references/literature tree.md for construction methodology. Execution rule : Do NOT generate ideas without real paper grounding. The tree must reference actual papers with titles, authors, and findings. Paper search MUST go through paper navigator — never use WebSearch/WebFetch as a shortcut. Step 3: Generate Ideas Generate 3 initial research ideas from 3 distinct research directions, grounded in the literature. Three Personas Persona Focus Innovator Novelty & creativity — groundbreaking, high risk/high reward Pragmatist Feasibility — realistic, clearly executable Critic Scientific value — advances understanding, rigorous Process 1. Analyze literature + challenge insight tree → identify 3 fundamentally different research directions 2. Generate one idea per direction using Innovator persona 3. Each idea must follow one of two methodological paths: Path 1 (Focused Contribution) : Single new component; clean hypothesis Path 2 (System Contribution) : Tight causal interaction between components; emergent capability Idea Format Step 4: Refine Ideas Run 3 parallel refinement tracks — one per initial idea. Each track uses all 3 personas. 5 Evolution Strategies 1. Enhancement through Grounding : Strengthen with literature citations 2. Improving Coherence : Fix logical flaws in the mechanism 3. Inspiration and Combination : Combine with a different concept from literature 4. Simplification : Strip down to a clean, testable hypothesis 5. Literature Driven Pivot : Abandon the mechanism; propose a new approach from literature Critical rule : If evaluation says the approach is a dead end, the persona MUST pivot — refinement is not restricted to patching. Logical Cohesion Principles Too many variables → Focus via Subtraction: isolate the most promising variable Disconnected components → Justify via Strong Correlation: build explicit causal links Step 5: ELO Tournament → Present Top 3 Rank all track champions through pairwise comparison, then present the top 3 to the user for selection . Four Dimensions Dimension What It Measures Novelty How different from existing published work? Feasibility Can this be implemented within reasonable resources? Relevance Does this address an important problem aligned with the goal? Clarity Is the idea well defined enough to start immediately? Tournament Starting Elo : 1500 K factor : 32 Compare ideas pairwise → update Elo → sort by final score See references/elo ranking guide.md for rubric and formula Present Top 3 to User After the tournament, present the top 3 ideas with both a comparison table and the full refined idea for each. This ensures the user sees the concrete, actionable version of each idea — not just a summary. Part 1: Comparison Table Part 2: Full Refined Ideas For each of the top 3, present the refined idea using the same structured format as Step 3, plus a refinement summary: This section is mandatory — do NOT skip the full refined ideas or collapse them into the comparison table. The user needs to see the complete, refined version to make an informed selection. Part 3: Selection Prompt After presenting top 3, trigger Step 6 (evo memory IDE) before finalizing user selection. The user may: Pick one of the top 3 Ask to combine elements from multiple ideas Request modifications before expanding Ask to regenerate with different constraints Step 6: Update evo memory After the tournament and before the user selects, trigger evo memory IDE (Idea Direction Evolution): 1. Save the top 3 directions to /direction summary.md 2. Trigger IDE protocol via evo memory skill with the direction summary 3. Each top direction is added to M I as a feasible direction with its ELO score 4. Any ideas that were clearly unworkable during refinement (Step 4) are recorded as unsuccessful directions with failure classification (fundamental vs implementation) This ensures future ideation cycles benefit from what was learned in this cycle. Step 7: Expand into Proposal After the user selects an idea, expand it into a manuscript quality research proposal. This is a two phase process because different fields require different proposal structures. Phase 1: Generate a Domain Specific Template Before writing, first generate a proposal template tailored to the user's field: 1. Identify the field from the research goal and literature 2. Start with universal sections (Abstract, Problem, Related Work, Method, Evaluation, Conclusion) 3. Add field specific sections (e.g., Ethics/IRB for medical research, Safety analysis for chemistry, Statistical power analysis for clinical trials, Ablation design for ML) 4. Adapt terminology to the field's conventions (e.g., "Study Design" in medicine, "Methodology" in social sciences, "Proposed Method" in engineering) See assets/proposal template.md for the complete field specific section guide and writing instructions. Phase 2: Write the Proposal Fill the generated template following these universal principles: Write for a top tier reviewer in the field — every claim supported, every design justified Avoid variable confusion: clearly isolate the core contribution Match the field's rigor standards (math for quantitative fields, protocols for experimental fields, coding schemes for qualitative fields) Anticipate skeptical reviewer questions proactively See references/proposal extension.md for detailed section guidance. Step 8: Validate and Iterate Run experiments on representative data. If the approach fails, return to Step 3 or Step 4 with updated knowledge. See experiment craft for systematic debugging. Counterintuitive Rules 1. Problem selection solution design : Choosing WHAT to solve matters more than HOW 2. Pursue new failure cases, not incremental improvements : Find settings where existing methods break 3. If a well established solution exists, switch problems : Improvement space is too small 4. Technology is creative combination, not concatenation : Simple A→B pipelines are not contributions 5. Quantity before quality in generation : Generate many candidates before evaluating any 6. Feasibility is not optional : Brilliant but infeasible ideas waste research cycles 7. The tournament finds surprises : Trust rankings over gut feeling Dependency: paper navigator All paper discovery goes through paper navigator . This skill does not search for papers itself. Using WebSearch, WebFetch, or any generic search tool to find papers is PROHIBITED — these tools cannot access Semantic Scholar, citation graphs, or academic recommendation systems. Always use paper navigator and its scripts (scholar search, citation traverse, arxiv monitor, recommend, trending, etc.) for all paper discovery needs in Steps 2, 3, and 4. Step Requires paper navigator for Step 2 Collect 30 50 relevant papers for literature tree construction Step 3 Verify no well established solution exists for selected problems Step 4 Cross domain search for transferable techniques during refinement evo memory Integration When Action Details Step 0 (before ideation) Read M I Load /memory/ideation memory.md , select top 2 relevant entries, use feasible directions as seeds, avoid fundamental failures Step 6 (after tournament) Write M I via IDE Save top 3 directions with ELO scores as feasible; save dead end ideas as unsuccessful with failure classification Handoff To When Key Artifacts paper planning Proposal complete (Step 7) → plan paper structure /research proposal.md , /direction summary.md experiment pipeline Proposal complete (Step 7) → start experiments /research proposal.md , /direction summary.md evo memory After tournament (Step 6) → update Ideation Memory via IDE protocol /direction summary.md References & Assets Topic File Literature tree construction references/literature tree.md Problem selection framework references/problem selection.md Solution design methodology references/solution design.md Tree expansion rules references/tree search protocol.md ELO formula & rubric references/elo ranking guide.md Proposal section guidance references/proposal extension.md Idea candidate template assets/idea candidate template.md Ranking scorecard assets/ranking scorecard template.md Direction summary assets/direction summary template.md Proposal example (E FNO) assets/proposal template.md

research-ideation