usenix-symposium-on-operating-systems-design-and-implementation - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: usenix-symposium-on-operating-systems-design-and-implementation description: Use when targeting USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI) or deciding whether a computer-science manuscript fits this venue. Encodes conference fit, framing, evidence bar, submission-cycle checks, rebuttal posture, and desk-reject risks for systems flagship.

USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI)

Conference positioning

USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI) is a top computer-science conference venue for operating systems, distributed systems, storage, cloud infrastructure, and practical systems design. It rewards a systems paper whose design is built, measured, and shown to change performance or reliability tradeoffs. Treat this skill as a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool for conference submission strategy, not as a substitute for the current year's CFP, author kit, ethics policy, or submission portal.

Because CS conferences change deadlines, templates, page limits, review workflow, artifact rules, AI-use policy, and rebuttal formats every cycle, always verify the live official instructions before making a submission-ready recommendation. Start from the official source anchor recorded for this venue in ../../resources/conference-roster.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md.

When to trigger

The author names OSDI / USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation as the target venue.
A manuscript in operating systems needs a conference-fit read before being formatted or submitted.
The paper must be re-framed from journal style or arXiv style into a selective CS conference narrative.
The author needs an evidence-gap, anonymity, artifact, rebuttal, or re-routing diagnosis for this venue.

Scope & topic fit

Core fit: operating systems, distributed systems, storage, cloud infrastructure, and practical systems design.
Best submissions make a precise contribution type visible: algorithm, theorem, system, dataset, benchmark, empirical finding, design artifact, tool, or socio-technical analysis.
The paper should explain why the result matters to OSDI's reviewers, not just why it is interesting to the authors' lab or product context.
Position related work against the most recent conference-cycle papers in this venue and its closest siblings; stale comparisons are a common early-review weakness.
If the contribution is interdisciplinary, state which part is CS research and which part is domain evidence.

Venue-specific calibration

Reviewer lens: Read reviewers as systems researchers. A real artifact, workload, and design tradeoff are stronger than a conceptual sketch.
Contribution hook to foreground: the venue-specific contribution bar.
Scope vocabulary to use naturally in the abstract and introduction: operating systems, distributed systems, storage, cloud infrastructure, and practical systems design.
Distinctive fingerprint for reviewer calibration: operating, distributed, storage, cloud, infrastructure, practical, design, venue-specific, contribution, flagship, usenix.
Official anchor domain: www.usenix.org. Quote annual rules only after opening that source and the current-year CFP/author kit.

Close-neighbor routing guardrail

Use this profile only when the manuscript's central contribution is genuinely in systems flagship and the author can say why OSDI reviewers are the primary audience, not merely a convenient deadline.
Closest roster neighbors to compare before final routing: acm-symposium-on-user-interface- software-and-technology (UIST), acm-symposium-on-operating-systems-principles (SOSP), usenix-symposium-on-networked-systems-design-and-implementation (NSDI), acm-sigcomm (SIGCOMM). Break ties by contribution type, evidence shape, reviewer community, and the current official CFP from www.usenix.org.

What distinguishes this venue from its closest siblings

Organizer & scope. USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design & Implementation — OS, runtime, storage, and systems infrastructure.
vs NSDI. NSDI (also USENIX) is networked/distributed systems; route OS/runtime/storage results here and networked-systems results to NSDI.
vs SOSP. SOSP (ACM SIGOPS) is the other top OS flagship; OSDI/SOSP alternate-year cadence and committees are the practical routing axis, not topic.

OSDI-specific routing detail

Prefer OSDI when the contribution is an operating-system, runtime, storage, resource-management, cloud-infrastructure, or systems-design result with a built artifact.
Route networked/distributed infrastructure where the network is the object to NSDI, storage-specific persistence work to FAST, and ACM SIGOPS-cycle peers to SOSP when timing/community fits better.
OSDI evidence should expose the system abstraction, implementation constraints, workload realism, design tradeoffs, and performance or reliability change against mature baselines.

Method & evidence bar

Build the artifact or prototype far enough that the core design can be measured under realistic workloads.
Use appropriate baselines, sensitivity analyses, and workload characterization; systems reviewers look for hidden bottlenecks.
Separate engineering effort from research contribution: name the abstraction, mechanism, or tradeoff.
For OSDI, the evidence must support the venue-specific signature: a systems paper whose design is built, measured, and shown to change performance or reliability tradeoffs.
Include limitations, negative results, compute/resource reporting, data provenance, and ethics details when they affect the claim.

Structure & house style

Start from a systems pain point and show why existing abstractions fail.
Use evaluation sections that answer research questions, not a tour of every benchmark run.
Use the current official template exactly; do not guess page limits, font sizes, supplement rules, anonymity exceptions, or camera-ready requirements from old cycles.
The introduction should answer: problem, why now, what is new, why this venue, and what evidence proves the claim.
Put the strongest result in the main paper, not only in the appendix or supplement; reviewers should not have to reconstruct the contribution.

Official-cycle checklist

Open the live official venue page: https://www.usenix.org/conferences/byname/179
Re-check the current cycle's CFP, author kit, submission system, abstract/paper deadlines, page limits, supplementary-material rules, anonymity policy, dual-submission policy, ethics policy, AI-use policy, artifact/code/data expectations, rebuttal/author-response format, and camera-ready requirements.
Confirm the review workflow and portal: the current USENIX/ACM/IEEE author kit, artifact policy, and submission system.
Check whether accepted papers require in-person presentation, separate registration, artifact badges, proceedings copyright, or post-acceptance release forms.
If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.

Pre-submission self-check

One sentence states why this manuscript belongs at OSDI, using the venue's scope rather than generic "top conference" language.
The claim is calibrated to the evidence: no broader than the datasets, proofs, systems, user studies, deployments, or threat model support.
Related work includes the nearest current-cycle systems flagship papers and explains the technical delta.
The paper satisfies the current official template, anonymity, ethics, artifact, and rebuttal requirements.
The main paper is self-contained enough for reviewers to evaluate novelty and correctness without hunting through external links.

Common desk-reject triggers

Toy implementation or microbenchmark-only evidence for a systems claim.
No comparison to mature systems or no explanation of deployment constraints.
Performance gains with unclear workload representativeness.
Formatting, anonymity, dual-submission, external-link, or supplement violations under the current-year policy.
A contribution framed for a neighboring field while giving OSDI reviewers too little technical or empirical substance.

Re-routing decision

If the paper misses OSDI's bar, compare against acm-symposium-on-operating-systems-principles / usenix-symposium-on-networked-systems-design-and-implementation / acm-sigcomm / architectural-support-for-programming-languages-and-operating-systems. Re-route based on contribution type, not prestige: theory to a theory venue, systems to a systems venue, application-heavy work to a domain venue, and early ideas to workshops or shorter tracks when the official CFP supports them.

Output format

[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI)
[Contribution type] algorithm / theory / system / dataset / benchmark / empirical / design / security / other
[Main evidence gap] <single most important missing proof, experiment, study, artifact, or policy check>
[Official items to re-check] CFP / author kit / deadline / format / anonymity / ethics / AI-use / artifact / rebuttal / camera-ready
[Top rejection risk] <venue-specific risk>
[Re-route suggestion] <better-matched conference or journal if not a fit>