idea-quality

Idea Quality

Judge how strong a research idea is at the idea stage — before any experiments exist — and return a quality score with reasons a reviewer would recognize. This skill is self-contained: it judges from first principles on the three axes below. It consults no external corpus, dataset, or other skill, so its judgment is reproducible from the idea text alone.

Input: an idea Markdown file

The idea is a .md file with three sections. Read the file, then map each section to what it feeds:

# Title
<≤ ~15 words: the idea's handle>

## Motivation
<the bottleneck / gap the idea attacks, why it matters, and why it is still open>

## Method
<the proposed contribution as concrete numbered steps>

• Title → the handle.
• Motivation → feeds Axis A (is the problem worth attacking) and gives Axis C the "problem" half.
• Method → feeds Axis B (is the method good) and gives Axis C the "method" half.

If a section is missing or thin, infer the most reasonable reading from the rest and note the assumption in the report — do not stall asking for clarification. If the user passes two files (or one file with two ideas) and wants a comparison, run the pairwise track.

Scope: what this judges, and what it deliberately does not

• No experiments exist. Every axis is a reasoning-level judgment — the kind a reviewer makes from an abstract before seeing results. Never invent or assume experimental results to score with. If a claim's truth would need an experiment, judge the plausibility of its argument, not an imagined outcome.
• Not a prior-art check. "Has someone already done this?" is a separate literature-collision task. Judge whether the idea is good (real gap, deep method, sound + on-target), NOT whether a near-duplicate exists. Judge the contribution's intrinsic ambition, not its novelty against a literature search.

A strong score means the idea is strong; it does not predict acceptance, which also turns on execution this skill cannot see.

The three axes

Score on exactly these three. Each is (a) assessable from the idea alone without experiments, (b) able to discriminate strong from weak, and (c) not a proxy for writing polish.

A — Problem position quality. Is the gap the Motivation identifies real, important, non-obvious, and genuinely open — or shallow, already-solved, or a conveniently easy target?

• Strong: a gap that matters and that the field has not closed; naming it is itself insightful.
• Weak: an obvious / already-handled problem, or a soft target chosen so it can be "solved" cheaply.
• Why it exists: when the author picks their own bottleneck, the cheapest way to look successful is to pick a soft target. This axis is what stops a soft-bottleneck-plus-trivial-fix from scoring well.

B — Method quality. Is the proposed method good in itself? Score it as ONE number, but in the Reason you MUST decompose into three named sub-judgments, because a single number otherwise hides which of them is weak:

• depth — a genuinely new mechanism / construction / reframing vs an incremental tweak (a new schedule, one extra loss term, a hyperparameter).
• soundness — does the "why it should work" argument hold up internally? Are assumptions justified, or is there hand-waving / an unstated condition / a logical gap? Judge the method's own logic, regardless of which problem it aims at — fit is Axis C.
• feasibility — is it buildable in principle, or does it require resources / oracles / data that don't plausibly exist? This means "buildable", NOT "will get good numbers" — do not hallucinate results. This is the softest sub-judgment; let depth dominate B and treat feasibility as a tie-breaker, not an equal third.
• Note: B is about the magnitude and integrity of the method itself, judged intrinsically — NOT whether a duplicate exists in the literature (separate prior-art task).

C — Problem-fit. Does the Method actually target and plausibly resolve the specific gap in the Motivation — rather than an adjacent, easier, or different problem?

• Strong: the method's mechanism clearly bears on the identified gap; if it works, that gap closes.
• Weak: a method aimed at a different problem than the one claimed, or one whose connection to the gap is asserted, not shown.
• Boundary vs B-soundness: B-soundness asks "is the method's own logic coherent?"; C asks "does that logic connect to THIS problem?" A method can be internally sound (B high) yet solve the wrong problem (C low); or on-target (C high) yet hand-wavy (B low). Keep them separate.

Scoring: dual-track

Always run the absolute track. When comparing two ideas, ALSO run the pairwise track — and treat pairwise as the trustworthy signal, because relative judgments are far less noisy than absolute numbers (which bunch around 3/5). The absolute 0–100 is a readable secondary readout, not a calibrated truth.

Per axis, score 1–5 (integer). There are deliberately no fixed level descriptors — instead every score quotes the specific phrase / element of the idea that justifies it. A score with no quoted evidence is not allowed; the evidence requirement, not a rubric table, is what keeps scores honest. Judge substance, not length or fluency — a short crisp idea can score 5; a long polished one can score 2.

Track 1 — Absolute (per idea)

Overall score (equal weight, each axis 1→0 and 5→full):

overall = round(100 * (A + B + C - 3) / 12)

Verdict band: strong ≥ 67 · borderline 34–66 · weak < 34.

A/C gate (overrides the band). A and C are near-necessary, B is not — so:

• If A ≤ 2 OR C ≤ 2, the verdict cannot be strong (cap at borderline at best), regardless of the number. Reason: a great method on a trivial problem (low A), or a great problem with a method that doesn't address it (low C), is not a strong idea — and the equal-weight mean would otherwise mislead. State the cap and why in one line.
• A low B alone does NOT cap: a simple method that genuinely addresses an important problem (counter-intuitive minimalism) can still be strong.

Track 2 — Pairwise (comparing two ideas)

For each axis state which idea is stronger (Idea 1 / Idea 2 / tie) and why, in one line; for axis B, note per-sub-judgment (depth / soundness / feasibility) which arm wins so the diagnostic isn't lost. Then give an overall winner holistically — but problem-fit (C) is near-necessary: a decisive C loss usually decides the overall, even if that idea wins A and B, because a method that doesn't fit its problem isn't the better idea. Decide each axis independently; do not let one axis sway the others.

Judge blind to source. If two ideas are compared as part of an evaluation, do NOT factor in which system/model produced which — provenance is not evidence of quality. (For this to be fair, the two inputs must share the same Title/Motivation/Method format; flag it if they don't.)

Output format

For a single idea:

## Idea Review — <title>

**Decomposition**
- Problem / gap (from Motivation): …
- Method (the proposed move): …
- Why it should work: …
(assumptions inferred, if any: …)

**Axis scores**
| Axis | Score (1–5) | Evidence (quoted from the idea) | Reason |
|------|-------------|----------------------------------|--------|
| A — Problem position | | | |
| B — Method quality | | | depth: … · soundness: … · feasibility: … |
| C — Problem-fit | | | |

**Overall: NN / 100  ·  Verdict: strong | borderline | weak**
<if the A/C gate fired: one line naming the cap and why>

**Strongest point:** <one sentence>
**Most fixable weakness:** <one sentence, phrased as what would raise the score>

For a comparison, output the absolute block for each idea, then:

## Pairwise verdict (Idea 1 vs Idea 2)
| Axis | Stronger | Why (one line) |
|------|----------|----------------|
| A — Problem position | 1 / 2 / tie | |
| B — Method quality | 1 / 2 / tie | depth / soundness / feasibility: who wins each |
| C — Problem-fit | 1 / 2 / tie | |

**Overall winner: Idea 1 | Idea 2 | tie** — <one–two sentence rationale; if a decisive C loss drove it, say so>

Anti-bias rules (why they matter)

• Quote evidence for every score. A bare number is a vibe, and vibes don't separate strong ideas from weak ones; tying each score to a specific claim makes the judgment auditable and the comparison fair.
• Judge substance, not length / fluency / formatting. A confident, well-structured write-up can dress up a thin idea — resist rewarding presentation, especially in B-soundness where fluent prose most easily hides an unsound step.
• Stay at the idea stage. Don't imagine experimental results to justify a score. If verifying a claim would need an experiment, score the argument's plausibility, not a hallucinated outcome.
• In comparisons, judge blind to source. Which model or system produced an idea is not evidence about its quality; ignore it.