Ready to supercharge your AI agents?

Install any skill in seconds. Free to start, no credit card required.

Topic Selection & Area Fit (aaag-topic-selection) · brycewang-stanford | DecimalAI

researchby brycewang-stanford

Topic Selection & Area Fit (aaag-topic-selection)

brycewang-stanford/aaag-topic-selection

Source brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills ↗License MIT

Use when deciding whether a topic fits the Annals of the American Association of Geographers and which of its four areas to target. Tests geographic significance and area fit; it does not design the study or write the paper.

SkillScore95Maintained

Automatic

Writing & Editing pack

Last verified 8/15/2026

What it changes

Passed 21 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 3 of 22 without it.

Without skill14%

With skill95%

Checks it passed that the model alone missed

Output includes the `【Area】` section tag.
Output includes the `【Type】` section tag.
Output includes the `【Reach】` section tag.

and 15 more in the full report

18 fixed3 passed either way1 still failing0 broke

Pass-rate lift: +82 pp
Tokens: +20%
Agent turns: 0%
Response time: -39%

Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/15/2026v121 of 22 cases passed with skill

Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.

Use this skill

Save it into your project's skills folder. Claude Code picks it up in its next session.

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection/SKILL.md

Want it pinned and updatable? pip install "decimalai>=0.15", then decimalai skills add brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection, and start Claude Code with claude --plugin-dir "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.agents"

1 · One-time — install the CLI (docs ↗)

pip install "decimalai>=0.15"

2 · Get the skill — writes .agents/skills/brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection/ and pins it in .decimal/skills.lock

decimalai skills add brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection

No CLI? Get the same file — curl · raw file

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection/SKILL.md

Raw file: /s/brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection/SKILL.md ↗ · machine-readable summary at /s/brycewang-stanford-aaag-topic-selection.json ↗

Safety checks: 3 of 3 passed

Code scan CleanIntent PassedContent Clean

See it in action

One of 18 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.

1 of 18

Prompt

I created an agent-based model coupling vegetation burn patterns with human evacuation behaviors. Assess fit for Annals using fields Area, Geographic core, Reach, Venue check, Type, Next.

What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked	Without skill	With skill
Output designates Nature and Society for the Area field.	Missed	Passed
Output includes both social and environmental dynamics in the core assessment.	Passed	Passed

case-11 · gemini-3.6-flash · 8/15/2026 · answers are capped and redacted

What's inside

The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.

SKILL.md87 linessingle file

Topic Selection & Area Fit (aaag-topic-selection)

The Annals is the AAG's broad four-area flagship. A topic earns a place by being geographic — space, place, scale, region, or spatial process is constitutive of the question — and by speaking to one of the journal's areas with enough reach that geographers outside that subfield see why it matters.

When to trigger

Choosing a project, or deciding if a draft fits the Annals vs. a specialty venue
A reviewer or colleague said "this isn't really geography" or "this is too narrow"
Unsure whether to declare Geographic Methods, Human, Nature-Society, Physical, or General Geography

The two-part fit test

Geographic-ness. Could you delete every spatial/place/scale element and keep the argument? If yes, it is not yet a geography paper — the geography must do theoretical work, not just locate data.
Area reach. Within the declared area, would a geographer in a neighboring subfield see the stake? An over-narrow result that only its sub-sub-field cares about is an Annals off-fit.

Declare the area (it routes the paper and sets the bar)

Area	Core of a strong topic	Off-fit signal
Geographic Methods	a method/model that improves geographic inference (spatial dependence, scale, MAUP, uncertainty)	a generic ML/stats trick with a coordinate column bolted on
Human Geography	a spatially/relationally theorized account of social process	a sociology/anthropology paper with a study-area map
Nature and Society	a coupled human-environment dynamic where both sides are theorized	one side asserted as backdrop to the other
Physical Geography, Earth & Environmental	an earth-surface/environmental process with geographic framing and earth-science rigor	a lab/RS result with no geographic question
General Geography	a contribution that reorders how all geographers see something	a paper that just won't pick an area

Calibrating ambition (Annals vs. specialty venue)

Specialty venue (e.g., IJGIS, Geomorphology, Environment and Planning D) when the audience is the sub-field and the advance is incremental within it.
The Annals when the contribution is legible to the area broadly and connects to geographic theory or to a cross-cutting concern (scale, place, environment-society, spatial method).
The cross-disciplinary/General track when the contribution genuinely spans areas.

Sibling-journal guard (do not mis-pitch)

Progress in Human Geography — review/agenda essays, not original empirical studies.

Track record

Benchmark

21 / 22

test cases passed, vs 3 / 22 without

Adoption

Users: 0
Times used: 0

Safety and source details

SkillSafety

✓ 3 of 3 passed

Code scan15 of 15 checks clean

0 critical · 0 warning · 0 info — scanner v4 — 8/3/2026

View 15 scanner checks

live_secretremote_code_executionreverse_shelldata_exfiltrationssrf_metadataagent_snoopinganti_refusaldestructive_commandsobfuscated_unicodeunicode_homoglyphopaque_blobsuspicious_urltool_overreachtrigger_abuseprompt_injection_phrasing

IntentSafe

LLM judge · does the skill do what it claims

ContentClean

LLM judge · policy & harmful-content review

Source

Imported

brycewang-stanford / awesome-journal-skills

Annals-of-the-American-Association-of-Geographers-Skills/skills/aaag-topic-selection/SKILL.md

View on GitHub ↗

License MITImported 8/3/2026Version v1

More skills from the same source and nearby in the registry, with their headline benchmark lift.

Ready to supercharge your AI agents?

See it in action

What's inside

Topic Selection & Area Fit (aaag-topic-selection)

When to trigger

The two-part fit test

Declare the area (it routes the paper and sets the bar)

Calibrating ambition (Annals vs. specialty venue)

Sibling-journal guard (do not mis-pitch)

Track record

Benchmark

Adoption

SkillSafety

Source

Related skills