--- name: osdi-supplementary description: Use when deciding where OSDI content lives given the no-appendix submission rule — triaging material between the 12-page reviewed body, the 14-page-plus-appendices final paper, and the public artifact, since OSDI (unlike appendix-friendly venues) reviews nothing outside the body. --- # OSDI Supplementary Material OSDI inverts the supplement habit most authors bring from ML and ACM venues. Rules below are the OSDI '26 cycle (verified 2026-07-08): submissions get **12 pages plus unlimited references and nothing else** — the CFP permits extra pages for references "but not for supplementary material in appendices." There is no supplement upload, no appendix, no ZIP. Accepted papers later expand to **14 pages plus references and appendices**, plus an optional **two-page Artifact Appendix** for papers passing artifact evaluation. ## The three destinations Every piece of material has exactly one correct home: | Destination | What belongs there | When it exists | |---|---|---| | 12-page reviewed body | Everything a reviewer needs to judge correctness and significance | Submission (December) | | Final-paper appendix (post-acceptance) | Depth for readers: full protocol details, extended results, proofs written out, the Artifact Appendix | Final papers (June) | | Public artifact | Code, traces, configurations, raw data, runbooks | Archived by the May artifact deadline | The triage question for any candidate paragraph, proof, table, or figure: **"Does a skeptical reviewer need this to accept the paper?"** Yes → it earns body space, and something weaker must leave to make room. No → it waits for the final-paper appendix or the artifact, and the body carries a one-line summary of what exists. ## Living without an appendix at submission Techniques for material that would be an appendix elsewhere: - **Proofs and invariants** — state the invariant and the proof's one load-bearing step in the body ("safety follows because a lease transfer requires quorum acknowledgment of the epoch bump"); the full proof is final-paper appendix material. If the paper is unacceptable without the full formal argument, OSDI's format is telling you something about venue fit (`osdi-topic-selection`). - **Extended result grids** — the body shows the RQ-answering figure; the sweep across every configuration goes to the artifact as data plus plotting scripts, referenced in one sentence without a link that breaks anonymity. - **Protocol/config detail** — compress into a table; systems reviewers extract more from a dense parameter table than from two pages of prose. - **Never** point to an external URL as a de facto appendix. An anonymous link carrying material the paper depends on violates the spirit of the rule reviewers enforce, and any non-anonymous link is a double-blind breach (`osdi-submission`). ## Planning the June expansion in December Write the submission with a marked expansion plan so the accepted version is an unfolding, not a rewrite: ```text % submission-time annotations, kept in comments in the source % [FINAL-14pp] restore lease-protocol failure cases cut from §4.2 % [FINAL-APPENDIX-A] full safety proof (draft in proofs/safety.tex) % [FINAL-APPENDIX-B] full workload sweep grid (artifact: plots/sweep/) % [ARTIFACT-APPENDIX] runbook skeleton -> becomes the 2-page AE appendix % rule: nothing in FINAL-* may be load-bearing for acceptance ``` The rule in the last comment is the audit: if any `FINAL-*` item is something a reviewer would have needed, it must be promoted into the body *now* — after acceptance is too late to have convinced anyone, and OSDI '26 offered no response period in which to supply missing material on request. ## Triage decision flow Run each candidate item through this flow when the draft first crosses 12 pages — not on deadline night: ```text item: proof / table / protocol detail / extra experiment / config dump | needed by a skeptical reviewer to ACCEPT? --yes--> body (cut something weaker; | osdi-writing-style compression no pass runs first) | needed by a READER or REPRODUCER later? --yes--> is it prose/math? | yes -> final-paper appendix no no (code/data/runs) | -> artifact cut entirely (deadline-week sunk cost is not a reason to keep it) ``` Two calibration notes: reviewers differ, so when genuinely unsure whether an item is acceptance-critical, it goes in the body — the no-response process gives no chance to supply it on request; and the body must summarize every deferred item in one sentence ("the full sweep, 240 configurations, accompanies the artifact"), because an unmentioned deferral is indistinguishable from a gap. ## The Artifact Appendix (the one supplement OSDI formalizes) For papers that pass artifact evaluation, the final paper may add up to two pages documenting the artifact in a standard format: what the artifact contains, hardware and software requirements, how to reproduce which claims. Treat it as the public, citable interface to the artifact — written from the runbook the AE committee already exercised (`osdi-artifact-evaluation`), not composed fresh in June. ## Triage failure modes - Submitting a paper that silently assumes appendix space exists — discovered at page 13, two days before the deadline. - Cutting load-bearing evidence to fit, instead of cutting redundancy (`osdi-writing-style`'s compression pass comes first). - An external "anonymous supplement" link standing in for the forbidden appendix. - Deferring so much to the final version that reviewers correctly judge the submission incomplete — conditional acceptance mandates fixes, but only for papers strong enough to conditionally accept. ## Output format ```text [No-appendix compliance] submission = body + refs only? violations: [Triage table] each deferred item -> destination (final-appendix / artifact) + body summary line present? [Load-bearing audit] any FINAL-* item a reviewer actually needs? [External links] none that carry evidence / none that break anonymity? yes/no [June plan] expansion annotations in source? artifact-appendix runbook started? ```