  Coclass theory has been a highly successful approach towards the
investigation and classification of finite nilpotent groups. Here we suggest a
similar approach for finite nilpotent semigroups. This differs from the group
theory setting in that we additionally use certain algebras associated to the
considered semigroups. We propose a series of conjectures on our suggested
approach. If these become theorems, then this would reduce the classification
of nilpotent semigroups of a fixed coclass to a finite calculation. Our
conjectures are supported by the classification of nilpotent semigroups of
coclass 0 and 1. Computational experiments suggest that the conjectures also
hold for the nilpotent semigroups of coclass 2 and 3.
