AAAI Workflow
Use this as the project-management skill for an AAAI submission. Replace all dates with the current cycle's official timetable and work backwards from OpenReview cutoffs.
AAAI is a conference, not a journal: it has no standing editor-in-chief and no article-processing charge. The rotating leadership is the per-edition Program Chairs, and the cost model is registration fees, not APCs — at least one author must register at the in-person rate and present in person; AAAI-27 offers no remote option, and a paper without a registered presenter is removed before publication. The AAAI-27 chairs are not recorded in this pack: the AAAI-27 organizers URL still redirects to an older edition's roster, so no official page names them (the AAAI-26 chairs were Chad Jenkins and Matthew Taylor, and those appointments rotate). Re-check the current CFP and conference-organizers page rather than carrying a name or contact forward.
Milestones
- Venue fit: choose Main Track, AI for Social Impact, AI Alignment, or another AAAI program.
- Evidence lock: freeze contribution, baselines, ablations, checklist answers, and supplement.
- Abstract deadline: submit real metadata, title, abstract, authors, subject areas, and conflicts.
- Paper deadline: upload anonymous PDF, reproducibility checklist, supplement, and OpenReview fields.
- Phase 1 risk check: ensure the paper can be understood quickly and does not look checklist-thin.
- Review release: identify whether the paper is in Phase 2 and triage reviews, including AI review if present.
- Rebuttal: draft a compact, no-URL, no-new-results response using only submitted evidence.
- Decision: archive reviews, rebuttal, decision, and final submitted version.
- Acceptance: submit source files, copyright, camera-ready PDF, registration, presentation plan, and public artifacts.
Operating rules
- Keep a single checklist for page limit, anonymity, supplement integrity, author limit, and multiple-submission policy.
- Run a fresh anonymity audit after every PDF or ZIP export.
- Verify ZIP files open and reproduce expected paths before submission.
- Do not leave core evidence to rebuttal.
Backward-planning table
Because AAAI runs a two-phase review with hard OpenReview cutoffs and no second feedback round, the timeline is unforgiving. Anchor each gate to the prior one and to the official date, not a guess.
| Gate | Depends on | Slip consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Abstract deadline | title, authors, conflicts locked | cannot submit the paper |
| Paper deadline | anonymous PDF, checklist, supplement | summary reject or no entry |
| Phase-1 cut | clarity and checklist done early | no feedback, paper dies |
| Feedback round | submitted evidence only | wasted on new-results bans |
| Camera-ready | acceptance, copyright, registration | dropped from proceedings |
Phase-1 readiness gate
Treat the Phase-1 cut as the real deadline, earlier than acceptance. Before the paper deadline, a non-specialist colleague should be able to state your contribution, find the evidence, and confirm the checklist matches the paper. If they cannot, the broad-AI reviewer will not either.
Worked vignette
A team plans to "finish experiments in rebuttal." The workflow flags this as fatal: AAAI bars new results at feedback and may cut the paper in Phase 1 before feedback exists. The critical path moves to locking evidence and the checklist a week before the paper deadline, leaving the feedback window only for clarifying already-submitted material.
Output format
text[Current stage] idea / experiments / writing / submission / Phase 1 / rebuttal / accepted [Next official deadline] <date and source, or unknown> [Critical path] <three tasks that determine readiness> [Risk register] <page, anonymity, checklist, supplement, policy> [Owner map] <task -> person or role>
