apply-program-theme-extractor

Program Theme Extractor

Before anyone can ask "does my work fit here", someone has to answer "what is here". This skill answers only the second question, for one target or for a whole candidate list, with no applicant evidence in play.

It also answers a second, separate question on request: what does here offer and produce? That is the programme profile (step 6) — selling points, intended graduate, expected outcomes. It is kept apart from the theme on purpose: what a programme advertises is not what it selects for.

A programme's theme is published selection content, not marketing. Where it is declared, quote it. Where it is not declared, it may still be operative — visible in what the programme teaches, funds, and graduates — or the programme may be genuinely open, which is an equally real answer.

The load-bearing distinction in this skill:

A declared theme is what the institution says it selects for. It can disqualify a target.
An inferred theme is your hypothesis about what it selects for. It can shift emphasis. It can never disqualify a target.

Presenting an inferred theme with the authority of a declared one is worse than not running the screen at all — it manufactures a selection criterion that nobody published.

Use this when

The user has one target and its focus is unclear from the landing page.
The user has a candidate list (a consortium's pathway list, a doctoral school's research areas, a country's advertised positions, a saved shortlist) and wants each characterised before comparing anything to their profile.
The user asks whether a call is topic-restricted or open.
The user needs a pathway-level answer for a multi-specialisation joint programme.
A downstream skill needs a theme dossier that does not exist yet.
The user has shortlisted a target and asks what it offers: why choose this track, what graduate it aims to produce, what it teaches — usually as material for a "why this programme" paragraph or interview answer (step 6).

Do not use this when

The applicant's evidence is in play and the question is fit. Use apply-program-fit-mapper — it owns the core / adjacent-bridged / stretch / outside-scope verdict and the fit swap test on the bridging sentence.
The question is about one professor's research direction. Use apply-research-direction-mapper.
The question is how a target admits or funds people rather than what it selects for thematically. That is the application-regime and funding-regime axis inside apply-program-fit-mapper.
The user wants statement prose built on a theme. Use apply-sop-writer.

Workflow

1. Fix the unit of extraction

A theme attaches to a specific selecting body. Before searching, decide which one the user is asking about, because a programme and its pathways often differ:

a whole programme or consortium
one specialisation, track, or pathway inside it
a doctoral school, graduate school, or research centre
one funding call or cycle
one advertised position or project

For multi-pathway programmes, extract at the pathway level as well as the umbrella level. Fitting the umbrella while fitting no individual pathway is a common disqualifier, and it is invisible if you only extract the umbrella.

2. Fetch the official pages — always live, never from memory, in two passes

Search the web for every target that is not already in the conversation as page text. A programme you have never heard of is the normal case, not a reason to screen from recall. Titles are marketing and themes change per cycle, so neither the programme's name nor your prior knowledge of the field is evidence.

Inference is search-expensive and the cost scales with the candidate list, so run it in two passes and never spend the expensive one on targets that are already out.

Pass A — cheap, every target. Fetch only the programme or consortium page (plus each pathway page) and the current cycle's call, admission page, or vacancy text. This answers one question: is a theme declared here or not? Targets that come back declared are finished — go to step 3 and stop. Targets that come back link needed are finished too.

Pass B — expensive, only where pass A found nothing declared and the target is still a live candidate. Ask the user which targets survive their other filters (country, funding, degree level, deadline) before spending here; inferring themes for fifteen programmes when four survive is the main waste this skill can cause. Then fetch, recording URL plus access date for each:

the stated objectives, mission, or strategic-plan page behind the programme
the funder's own mission page where the programme is funded for an agenda
module or course lists — compulsory before elective, since required modules define scope and electives advertise breadth
the thesis or dissertation repository, or any published list of past or example project titles
the published research-area listing, and the faculty or partner roster as a distribution, not as individual profiles

Where the pages cannot be located, or the cycle's call is unpublished, output link needed and leave the target unclassified. Do not substitute a guess.

3. Extract the declared theme, if there is one

Take the institution's own wording verbatim, with its source. Then decompose it into the concrete research activities it actually covers. Umbrella phrases — "digital and green transition", "smart society", "sustainable industry" — are containers, not topics; pathway descriptions, module lists, partner composition, and example projects show what the container holds. Where the container is genuinely broad, record it as broad rather than narrowing it.

4. Where no theme is declared, test for an operative one

Only after step 3 finds nothing declared, and only for targets that reached pass B. Read the programme's behaviour off its official pages, in tiers, strongest first:

Tier 1 — funded and advertised work. Project portfolio, advertised positions, funded theses, centre grants. What it pays for is what it selects for.
Tier 2 — curriculum and output. Compulsory modules first, then specialisation options, past or example thesis titles, graduate destinations.
Tier 3 — people composition, in aggregate only. The published research-area listing, or the faculty/partner roster read as a distribution, and only where that roster is narrow and published as the programme's scope.
Tier 4 — framing language. Repeated vocabulary across objectives, news, and admission pages. The weakest tier and the easiest to over-read.

Three gates. An operative theme must pass all three, or the answer is genuinely open.

Two sources from two different tiers. A module list and an objectives page that paraphrases that curriculum are one source counted twice. At least one of the two must come from tier 1 or tier 2 — tier 3 and tier 4 cannot establish a theme between them. Record URL and access date for each.
Recency. Weight the current cycle's pages, and the last three to five years of projects, positions, and theses. A ten-year portfolio can encode a scope the programme has already left. Where the converging evidence is older than that, say so and downgrade to genuinely open rather than reporting a stale theme as current.
The exclusion test — the one that matters most. State what the hypothesised theme rules out. If the scope excludes no plausible applicant — "applied mathematics with societal impact", "data science for a changing world" — it is not a theme, it is a description of the field, and the honest status is genuinely open. An inferred theme that excludes nothing will otherwise fire on almost every target, which is exactly how this skill would decay into the framing generator its status labels exist to prevent.

Stop as soon as all three gates pass. Do not keep fetching to raise confidence in a label that already cannot drop a target. If the gates have not passed after the pass-B page list is exhausted, the answer is genuinely open — not a wider search.

4b. What is not evidence about a programme's theme

An individual professor's research. It is their direction, not the institution's selection scope, and generalising from three faculty pages invents a criterion nobody published. Person-level direction belongs to apply-research-direction-mapper. Only the aggregate roster distribution in tier 3 counts here.
The country. A nation has no theme. A country enters only where it produces a documented institutional mechanism, and only through the falsifiable chain geopolitical objective → programme objective → published selection criterion — which is already captured when step 2 fetches the funder's own mission page. "Programmes in this country tend to emphasise X" is a cultural prior, not published selection content, and must never appear in a dossier.
The programme's name, its department, its ranking, or your prior knowledge of the field.
Selling points. "Why study with us" copy, rankings claims, and brochure differentiators are the programme persuading applicants, not publishing a selection criterion. They are not even tier-4 framing evidence: they cannot count toward any gate and can never drop a target. They belong in the programme profile (step 6) only.

5. Assign exactly one status, and state it in the output

Status	Meaning	What it licenses downstream
`declared`	The institution publishes a theme, track scope, or topic restriction	Full fit screen, including "outside scope → drop the target"
`inferred`	No declared theme; two or more official sources converge on an operative scope	Reweighting emphasis and ordering of real evidence; at worst a stretch label plus "verify with the programme". Never a drop.
`genuinely open`	Official pages fetched; no declared theme, and the inference gates did not pass — no cross-tier convergence, evidence too old, or the scope excludes nobody	No thematic screen applies; fit rests on the intellectual axis
`link needed`	Official pages not located or cycle's call unpublished	Nothing. Target stays unclassified until the link exists

genuinely open and link needed must both remain visible outputs. Producing a theme for every target turns this skill into a framing generator — precisely the failure the whole screen exists to prevent.

6. Programme profile — pass C, on request, shortlisted targets only

Run this only when the user asks what a target offers, or when a "why this programme" paragraph or interview answer needs material — and only for targets the user is actually applying to. It runs for any target whose official programme page was located, even when the cycle's call is unpublished — among requested targets, skip it only when no official page exists — and it does not depend on passes A or B having found a theme. Characterising fifteen candidates does not need fifteen marketing reads. The profile is applicant-free, exactly like the theme. While extracting it, do not read or use the user's CV, profile, goals, statement drafts, stored memory, or anything known about them from this or earlier conversations. Do not select, rank, filter, phrase, or omit an item by its relevance to the user. The test: two different applicants asking about the same programme page on the same day must receive the same profile. Relating the profile to an applicant happens downstream — goal fit in apply-program-fit-mapper, need-tying in apply-sop-writer and apply-interview-prep — never here.

Fetch live, recording URL and access date, and give every item one authority label:

declared — formal institutional content: published programme learning outcomes, a qualification or graduate profile, compulsory modules, thesis requirements.
evidenced — observed data about what actually happens: graduate destination statistics, alumni placements, a published partner or internship list.
advertised — the programme's own persuasion: "why study with us", scholarship mission slogans, claimed differentiators.

The authority label declared is not the dossier status declared: a declared graduate profile or learning outcome is never a declared theme and licenses no thematic screen.

Never merge the labels. An advertised claim and the evidenced data behind it are reported as two lines.

(a) Selling points — what staff would say to convince you. Collect them from the landing page, "why this programme" and FAQ pages, the scholarship or funder mission page, and partner lists. First write one Positioning sentence, in the programme's own frame, of how it sells itself — what it leads with (industry links rather than research training, mobility rather than depth) is itself informative about what it wants to be. Label it advertised; it informs the user and is never handed downstream as a differentiator. Then run two checks on each claim:

Swap test. Would the claim survive being moved to a competing programme? The comparison class is programmes of the same level and field in general — never the user's own shortlist, which would make the list depend on the applicant. "World-class faculty", "international environment", "strong industry links", "interdisciplinary" — every programme says these. Mark them generic and drop them from the differentiator list.
Backing check. Is there a page that shows the claim — a named partner list, a mobility structure, a funded placement, a lab or dataset only this programme has? Backed → keep with its source. Unbacked → keep, labelled advertised, unbacked.

The differentiator list is the backed rows only. advertised, unbacked rows are listed beneath it for completeness and are never handed downstream as differentiators. An empty list is a legitimate answer.

(b) Intended graduate — who the programme is built to produce. Read the formal graduate or qualification profile (declared) and the career-prospects page — which is advertised unless it is itself a formal profile or is backed by destination data, then any destination or alumni data (evidenced). Extract the specialisations and capabilities the graduate is meant to hold, and the destinations the programme aims at — research/PhD pipeline, industry, public sector, the funder's home-country mission. Where the declared profile and the destination data disagree (a "research-oriented" programme whose graduates mostly go to industry), report both; the disagreement is the finding.

(c) Expected outcomes — what they actually teach. Formal programme learning outcomes first, then compulsory modules before electives, then required thesis, internship, or mobility components. Report what the programme commits to teaching, not what electives make possible.

Where a part has no official page, output none published for that part. Do not reconstruct a graduate profile from the programme's name or field.

The profile is offer content, not selection content. It never changes the theme status, and never drops a target. Pages fetched in pass C are never re-fed into step 4; for targets with status inferred or genuinely open, if pass C surfaces a tier-1 or tier-2 page that pass B missed, record candidate theme evidence — re-run pass B and leave the status unchanged.

7. Hand off

State explicitly which downstream question this dossier does not answer: whether the applicant fits. Route to apply-program-fit-mapper with the dossier, and carry the status label with it — the fit verdict's power depends on it.

Output format

One block per target.

# Theme Dossier: [Programme / pathway / call]

- **Unit extracted:** [programme | pathway | doctoral school | call | position]
- **Status:** declared | inferred | genuinely open | link needed
- **Cycle:** [year / call reference, or "not published"]

## Sources
| Source | URL | Accessed | What it contributes |
|---|---|---|---|

## Declared theme
> [verbatim institutional wording, or "none published"]

## Decomposition — research activities actually covered
- [Activity / method / domain] — evidence: [which source shows it]
- ...
- Genuinely broad in: [where the container was not narrowed]

## Operative theme (only when status = inferred)
- **Hypothesis:** [one sentence]
- **Converging sources:** [source 1, tier N] + [source 2, tier M] — different tiers, at least one from tier 1 or 2
- **Recency:** [dates of the evidence relied on]
- **Excludes:** [what this scope rules out — if nothing, the status is `genuinely open`, not `inferred`]
- **Not published by the institution** — may inform emphasis, must never be quoted as the programme's declared scope, and cannot drop this target.

## Pathways (multi-pathway targets)
| Pathway | Declared scope | Status |
|---|---|---|

## Programme profile (only when requested — pass C)
- **Positioning (advertised):** [one sentence, in the programme's own frame — not handed downstream]

### Differentiators (passed swap test and backing check)
| Claim | Authority | Backing page | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
<!-- authority: declared / evidenced / advertised (backed) -->
- Unbacked, not handed downstream: [advertised claims with no backing page]
- Dropped as generic: [claims every programme makes]

### Intended graduate
- **Declared profile:** [specialisations, capabilities, target destinations — or "none published"]
- **Evidenced destinations:** [data, year, source — or "none published"]
- **Mismatch:** [where declared and evidenced disagree, or "none found"]

### Expected outcomes
- **Learning outcomes:** [formal list, verbatim or close — or "none published"]
- **Compulsory components:** [modules, thesis, internship, mobility]

## Hard constraints found
- [topic restrictions, eligible research areas, mandatory specialisation choice, or "none found"]

## Not answered here
- Applicant fit. Route to `apply-program-fit-mapper` with this dossier and its status.
- How to use the programme profile in prose. Route differentiators and outcomes to `apply-sop-writer` or `apply-interview-prep`, and the intended graduate profile to `apply-program-fit-mapper` for the goal-fit check.

For a candidate list, precede the blocks with a one-row-per-target summary table (target, unit, status, one-line scope) so the user can triage before reading.

Quality bar

A strong output lets the user say what each target selects for, and cite where that came from. Every theme traces to a fetched page with a date. No target carries a scope the institution did not publish without an inferred label attached, and no target is dropped on an inferred theme. Targets whose pages could not be found are visible as link needed rather than quietly missing. A programme profile contains nothing that would change for a different applicant. In it, no advertised claim is presented as a differentiator without the swap test, and no graduate profile appears that the institution did not publish.

Two counts are worth watching as a self-check. If inferred is firing on most targets, the exclusion test is not being applied and the dossiers are describing fields rather than scopes. If pass B ran on targets the user had already ruled out on country, funding, or deadline, the search budget was spent on nothing.

Volatility

Themes, specialisation names, pathway lists, and topic restrictions change every cycle, and institutions differ within every country. This skill encodes the extraction method only — there is deliberately no catalogue of programmes and their themes, because such a catalogue would be wrong within a cycle. Re-extract per cycle.