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tooluniverse-scientific-problem-selection

Conversational framework for choosing what scientific problem to work on, pitching a new project idea, troubleshooting a stuck project, or making a strategic research decision. Use when users say "I have an idea for a project", "I'm stuck on my research", "what should I work on", "help me evaluate this project's risk", "is this idea worth pursuing", "help me decide between two research directions", "I need strategic advice about my research", or ask to pitch/refine/de-risk a hypothesis before running any experiments or analyses. Grounds the conversation in real literature-precedent and funding-landscape lookups rather than pure opinion.

skills/tooluniverse-scientific-problem-selection/SKILL.md

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# Scientific Problem Selection

A structured conversation for the decision that happens *before* any experiment, dataset pull, or analysis: which problem is actually worth the next few months (or years) of work. Problem choice dominates outcome more than execution quality — a well-executed answer to a low-value question is still a low-value result.

**LOOK UP, DON'T GUESS**: Every claim about novelty, precedent, or fundability in this skill must be checked against real tools, not asserted from memory. See `references/precedent-checking.md` for the exact tool names and when to call each one.

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## When to Use This Skill

Apply when users:
- Pitch a new project idea and want it stress-tested before committing time to it
- Say they are stuck, blocked, or a project stopped working and they need to decide what to do next
- Ask a strategic question about which of several directions to pursue