crypto-novelty-check

Crypto Novelty Check

Try to falsify novelty before supporting it. A finite search can find prior art; it cannot prove universal absence.

Scope

In scope: contribution decomposition, adversarial query/citation search plan, historical terminology, adjacent-field and version checks, closest-work claim comparison, priority evidence, and bounded novelty verdict.

Out of scope: global guarantees, legal patent opinions, proof correctness, or concealing inconvenient prior art.

Required Inputs

• precise candidate contribution claims;
• functionality, security notion/model, assumptions, parameters, technique, and claimed improvement;
• available literature corpus/search access and cutoff;
• venue/language/patent/unpublished boundaries.

Success Criteria

• Each novelty claim is independently searchable and falsifiable.
• Search coverage includes synonyms, historical terms, versions, backward/forward citations, adjacent formulations, and adverse evidence when available.
• Work identity and exact claim support are verified before comparison.
• Closest work is compared across formal claim, model, assumptions, parameters, functionality, proof basis, and compatible costs.
• Matching, partially overlapping, and non-comparable prior art are distinct.
• Verdict states sources, queries, dates, stopping rule, blind spots, and confidence limits.

Failure Modes

• Vague contribution: return alternative decompositions and stop verdict.
• Narrow access: produce partial prior-art map and explicit next frontier.
• Inaccessible source: do not decide match from title/abstract/snippet.
• Conflicting versions/priority: retain uncertainty and exact dates/records.
• Legal/patent certainty requested: state scope limit and recommend qualified counsel/search.

Never fabricate searches, sources, priority dates, claim content, or “first” status.

Workflow

1. Apply protocol.md to decompose the candidate and construct an adversarial search lattice.
2. Verify exact sources/versions and build closest-work claim matrices.
3. Seek evidence that weakens each novelty dimension before grading it.
4. Return matching prior art or a reproducible bounded negative search—not global novelty.
5. Use evaluation-scenarios.md for future independent evaluation.

Output Contract

Return: candidate claim decomposition; search scope/log and cutoff; disconfirming strategy; verified work/version set; closest-work matrix; matching/overlap findings; blind spots; grade (matching found / partial map / strong bounded negative / not assessable); permitted claim wording; next searches.