Agent skill · research science · anthropics
math-olympiad
Solve competition math problems (IMO, Putnam, USAMO, AIME) with adversarial verification that catches the errors self-verification misses. Activates when asked to 'solve this IMO problem', 'prove this olympiad inequality', 'verify this competition proof', 'find a counterexample', 'is this proof correct', or for any problem with 'IMO', 'Putnam', 'USAMO', 'olympiad', or 'competition math' in it. Uses pure reasoning (no tools) — then a fresh-context adversarial verifier attacks the proof using specific failure patterns, not generic 'check logic'. Outputs calibrated confidence — will say 'no confident solution' rather than bluff. If LaTeX is available, produces a clean PDF after verification passes.
Why this skill is useful
Adds a structured workflow for solving and verifying complex competition math problems, including adversarial verification techniques that enhance reasoning capabilities.
What it needs
About 12k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 33,212 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Math Olympiad Solver The five things that change outcomes 1. Strip thinking before verifying — a verifier that sees the reasoning is biased toward agreement. Fresh context, cleaned proof only. 2. "Does this prove RH?" — if your theorem's specialization to ζ is a famous open problem, you have a gap. Most reliable red flag. 3. Short proof → extract the general lemma — try 2×2 counterexamples. If general form is false, find what's special about THIS instance. 4. Same gap twice → step back — the case split may be obscuring a unified argument. Three lines sometimes does what twelve pages couldn't. 5. Say "no confident solution" — wrong-and-confident is worse than honest abstain. --- Tool policy: Solvers and verifiers use THINKING ONLY in the tight-budget workflow. Competition math is reasoning. Computation is for deep mode (§6c), and even then bounded — a recurrence that's doubly-exponential can't be computed past n~30, work mod 2^m instead. --- When to use which approach Problem Approach Verification ---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------- AIME numeric answer Best-of-N → majority vote Answer check only Olympiad proof (IMO/Putnam/USAMO) Full workflow below 5-pass adversarial "Is this proof correct?" Skip to verification (step 4) Adversarial + spec-gaming Full problem set (e.g. all 6 from a competition) Sequential: one full workflow per problem, collect results, compile single PDF Per-problem adversarial Batch in one Workflow: Set opts.label on every agent() call to include the problem ID (e.g., label: "P3:solver:2"). Without labels, 36 results come back with no problem association. Run problems in parallel — the label is what matters, not ordering. For a full problem set Launch one solver workflow per problem (same VERBATIM prompt, different statement). Run them in parallel. When all return, run adversarial verification per problem. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills anthropics/math-olympiad