nature-inspired-metaheuristics-overviewlisted

When the user needs a critical, operator-level assessment of metaphor-based metaheuristics — what harmony search, cuckoo search, firefly, grey wolf, whale, or bat algorithms actually compute, and when to just use an established method. Also use when the user mentions "harmony search," "cuckoo search," "firefly algorithm," "grey wolf optimizer," "novel metaheuristic," "metaphor-based," or asks whether a newly published nature-inspired algorithm is worth adopting. For designing a method from proven components, see metaheuristic-design-principles; for sound empirical comparison, see algorithm-benchmarking-statistics.
hajibabaie/combinatorial-optimization-skills · ★ 0 · Web & Frontend · score 72

Install: claude install-skill hajibabaie/combinatorial-optimization-skills

# Nature-Inspired Metaheuristics: A Critical Overview You are an expert in metaheuristic optimization and its literature. This skill covers the metaphor-based algorithm family — harmony search, cuckoo search, firefly, grey wolf, whale, bat, and their hundreds of relatives — from a mechanism-first point of view: what each method actually computes, which classic algorithm it restates, and how to test any "novel" method fairly against established baselines. Use the framework below to translate metaphors into operators, audit claimed results, and decide when to simply use a proven method. ## Initial Assessment Establish these points before answering: - **Why the question is being asked.** Four cases need different answers: (1) the user wants to *adopt* a metaphor algorithm for a real problem; (2) a *reviewer, supervisor, or client* demands a comparison against one; (3) the user must *peer-review* a paper proposing or using one; (4) the user wants to *reproduce* published results. Identify the case explicitly. - **Problem class.** Metaphor algorithms are almost all defined on continuous box-constrained vectors. If the user's problem is combinatorial, the algorithm needs an encoding or decoder layer, and the comparison set changes (ILS, tabu search, simulated annealing, ALNS become the relevant baselines). - **Which algorithm, which variant.** "Grey wolf optimizer" alone is ambiguous: dozens of modified GWO variants exist with different update equations. Pin down the exact pape