Colt workflow

COLT Workflow

Use this as the project-management layer for a COLT paper. Anchor everything to the live timetable: for the 39th edition the CFP (checked 2026-07-08) set one submission deadline — February 4, 2026, Anywhere on Earth, via CMT — for a conference running June 29 to July 3, 2026 in San Diego. Notification and camera-ready dates were not on the checked pages (待核实); take them from the CFP and acceptance email of your cycle.

Stage map

• Fit decision: confirm the contribution is a theorem a learning theorist wants (see colt-topic-selection); if the result is 80% proved, the clock question is whether the remaining 20% is verification or invention — only the first is schedulable.
• Result freeze: theorem statements stop moving. At COLT this is the single most important date you control, because every downstream artifact (proof appendix, overviews, comparisons) quotes the statements.
• Verification: independent re-derivation of every load-bearing proof (colt-reproducibility). Schedule it as real work with an owner per theorem — it finds bugs at a rate authors never want to believe.
• Writing: body-first is a mistake here; write the appendix proofs first, then distill overviews into the body, so the body never promises what the appendix cannot deliver.
• Submission week: CMT record early, anonymity sweep, single-PDF assembly (colt-submission).
• Rebuttal: reviews arrive before decisions; block calendar capacity for the window even before you know its dates (colt-author-response).
• Aftermath: acceptance → PMLR camera-ready and talk prep (colt-camera-ready); rejection → triage between fix-and-resubmit (next COLT / ALT) and re-routing.

Backward plan from the deadline

Weeks before deadline	Milestone	Failure smell
10+	All main results proved at whiteboard level	"The lower bound should follow" — it does not, yet
8	Theorem statements frozen; ledger of claims opened	Statements still absorbing scope changes
6	Full proofs written in LaTeX, appendix-structured	Proofs alive only in notebooks and heads
4	Independent verification pass complete; bugs triaged	"We'll verify while writing" (you will not)
3	Body drafted: setup, results, proof overviews, known-vs-new table	Overview promises diverging from actual proofs
2	Internal mock review by an uninvolved theorist	No one external has read the model section
1	Anonymity sweep, notation audit, cross-reference check	Renumbering theorems this late
0	Upload, re-download, verify the stored PDF; stop editing	Compiling at the AoE boundary

Weeks are heuristics; the deadline is not. AoE means when it is February 4 anywhere on Earth — compute your local cutoff and subtract a safety day.

Verification is the critical path

For a theory paper the long pole is never the writing; it is discovering at week 2 that Lemma 6 is false. Mitigations:

• Verify in dependency order, most-load-bearing first — a bug in the master lemma invalidates weeks of downstream polishing.
• When a bug appears, immediately re-derive the weakest still-true statement and check whether the paper survives with it; many COLT papers ship the weaker constant that week-3 debugging forced.
• Maintain the claim ledger (see colt-artifact-evaluation) as the single source of verification status; standups read the ledger, not vibes.

Team coordination template

# colt-plan.txt
DEADLINE (AoE):        2026-02-04  -> local cutoff 2026-02-05 11:59 UTC-12
RESULT FREEZE:         2025-12-10  owner: all
PROOF APPENDIX DRAFT:  2025-12-22  owner: A (Thm 1), B (Thm 2, lower bound)
VERIFICATION PASS:     2026-01-09  owner: swap (B checks Thm 1, A checks Thm 2)
BODY + OVERVIEWS:      2026-01-16  owner: A
MOCK REVIEW:           2026-01-21  reader: C (not a coauthor)
ANONYMITY + PDF QA:    2026-01-28  owner: B
UPLOAD TARGET:         2026-02-02  (two days of slack, CMT record made 01-25)
REBUTTAL WINDOW:       dates TBA with reviews -> block capacity on release

Workflow failure modes specific to theory papers

• The moving theorem: a coauthor strengthens a statement during the writing phase without re-opening its ledger entry; the appendix now proves the old claim. Rule: statement edits after freeze require a ledger re-verification, no exceptions.
• The optimistic lower bound: upper bound done, lower bound "clearly similar to [X]" and scheduled for week 2. Lower bounds are inventions, not chores — either prove it before freeze or descope the paper to the upper bound honestly.
• The single-verifier trap: the only person who checked Theorem 2 is the person who proved it. Swap verification assignments explicitly (the plan file above does).
• The deadline compile: first full single-PDF build in the final 48 hours, discovering the restatement macros and cross-references were never wired. Build the full document skeleton — body, appendix, references — by week 3 even while proofs are placeholders.

After the decision

• Accepted: camera-ready per instructions; book San Diego-style summer logistics early (single-track conference, one venue hotel); decide who talks.
• Rejected with deep reviews: the reviews are a free verification report — patch and target the next cycle or ALT (deadline typically in autumn; verify).
• Rejected for significance: the mathematics may be sound but mis-framed; rework the motivation and known-vs-new ledger before blaming the result.
• Either way, reconcile the arXiv version with what review taught you.
• Debrief the ledger: which claims did reviewers actually verify, and did your internal verification pass catch what they caught? Calibrating that gap improves the next paper's schedule more than any template.

Cycle-volatility warnings

• Every date above except the verified 2026 deadline and conference dates is cycle-specific; notification, rebuttal window, camera-ready, and registration timing are 待核实 until announced.
• Whether an Open Problems track (with its own deadline) runs in your cycle: check the CFP; the 2025 edition ran one with a later, non-anonymous, 4-page format.

Output format

[Stage] proving / freeze / verification / writing / submitted / rebuttal / decision
[Critical path] <the unverified claim or unwritten proof gating everything>
[Calendar] <next official date + source, or 待核实>
[Owner map] <theorem/task -> person>
[Slack] <days between planned upload and AoE cutoff>