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 (AAAI-26: Chad Jenkins and Matthew Taylor, verified 2026-06-22), and the cost model is registration fees, not APCs — at least one author must register at the in-person rate to present. Conference organizers rotate yearly, so 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.

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

[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>