Scooping Check

Scooping risk assessment — is someone else working on your research idea? Identifies competing groups, assesses pace of publication, evaluates whether the core insight is "in the air", and provides a watch list with search terms, key researchers, and venues to monitor.

/scooping-check — Is Someone Else Working on This?

Read agents/research-strategist.md and execute Mode 5: Scooping Risk Assessment.

The user provides a research idea or topic. Assess:

  • Number of capable and motivated groups working on similar problems
  • Pace of recent publication in this area (search academic databases)
  • Whether the core insight is "in the air" (multiple independent discoveries likely)
  • Time to completion for the user vs. competitors

Provide:

  1. Risk level: Low / Medium / High scooping risk
  2. Competing groups: Names, affiliations, recent publications
  3. Mitigation strategies: How to differentiate, accelerate, or pivot
  4. Watch list:
    • Search terms to monitor
    • Key researchers to track
    • Key venues where competing work would appear
    • Recommended review frequency (weekly/monthly)

Use academic search tools to ground the assessment in actual recent publications and preprints.

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