Novelty Check Agent Skill
Verify research idea novelty against recent literature. Use when user says \"查新\", \"novelty check\", \"有没有人做过\", \"check novelty\", or wants to verify a research idea is novel before implementing.
Install
one command, takes just this skill from the repositorynpx skills add https://github.com/wanshuiyin/Auto-claude-code-research-in-sleep --skill novelty-checkWhat it tells the agent to use
found in the instruction textThe instruction itself
8 sections, as written by the author> Override for Codex users who want Gemini, not a second Codex agent, to act as the reviewer. Install this package after skills/skills-codex/*.
Novelty Check Skill
> Gemini overlay assurance: review_independence: cross-family and acceptance_status: accepted.
Check whether a proposed method/idea has already been done in the literature: $ARGUMENTS
Constants
- REVIEWER_MODEL =
gemini-review— Gemini reviewer invoked through the localgemini-reviewMCP bridge. SetGEMINI_REVIEW_MODELif you need a specific Gemini model override.
Instructions
Given a method description, systematically verify its novelty:
Phase A: Extract Key Claims
- Read the user's method description
- 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 sources:
- Web Search (via
WebSearch): - 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 2024-2026
- Known paper databases: Check against:
- ICLR 2025/2026, NeurIPS 2025, ICML 2025/2026
- Recent arXiv preprints (2025-2026)
- Read abstracts: For each potentially overlapping paper, WebFetch its abstract and related work section
Phase C: Cross-Model Verification
Call REVIEWER_MODEL via mcp__gemini-review__review_start with high-rigor review:
mcp__gemini-review__review_start:
prompt: |
[Full novelty briefing + prior work list + specific novelty questions]
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 reviewer output, and save the completed threadId for any follow-up round.
Prompt should include:
- The proposed method description
- All papers found in Phase B
- Ask: "Is this method novel? What is the closest prior work? What is the delta?"
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 anything]
- 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
Other skills for the same job
different authors, same section of the catalogue
Assists in writing high-quality content by conducting research, adding citations, improving hooks, iterating on outlines, and providing real-time feedback on each section. Transforms your writing process from solo effort to collaborative partnership.
Identifies high-quality leads for your product or service by analyzing your business, searching for target companies, and providing actionable contact strategies. Perfect for sales, business development, and marketing professionals.
Use this skill to query your Google NotebookLM notebooks directly from Claude Code for source-grounded, citation-backed answers from Gemini. Browser automation, library management, persistent auth. Drastically reduced hallucinations through document-only responses.
Efficient database search tool for bioRxiv preprint server. Use this skill when searching for life sciences preprints by keywords, authors, date ranges, or categories, retrieving paper metadata, downloading PDFs, or conducting literature reviews.
Query and analyze scholarly literature using the OpenAlex database. This skill should be used when searching for academic papers, analyzing research trends, finding works by authors or institutions, tracking citations, discovering open access publications, or conducting bibliometric analysis across 240M+ scholarly works. Use for literature searches, research output analysis, citation analysis, and academic database queries.
Access USPTO APIs for patent/trademark searches, examination history (PEDS), assignments, citations, office actions, TSDR, for IP analysis and prior art searches.
Multiagent AI system for scientific research assistance that automates research workflows from data analysis to publication. This skill should be used when generating research ideas from datasets, developing research methodologies, executing computational experiments, performing literature searches, or generating publication-ready papers in LaTeX format. Supports end-to-end research pipelines with customizable agent orchestration.
Automated LLM-driven hypothesis generation and testing on tabular datasets. Use when you want to systematically explore hypotheses about patterns in empirical data (e.g., deception detection, content analysis). Combines literature insights with data-driven hypothesis testing. For manual hypothesis formulation use hypothesis-generation; for creative ideation use scientific-brainstorming.
How to use it
Take wanshuiyin/auto-claude-code-research-in-sleep-skills-codex-gemini-review-novelty-check from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal
use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.
The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the
same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.