Agent skill

Arecon Literature Synthesis

by brycewang-stanford in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills

A skill your agent uses when systematically gathering, reading, and synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding…

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Arecon Literature Synthesis

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill arecon-literature-synthesis -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills arecon-literature-synthesis --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/Annual-Review-of-Economics-Skills/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis .claude/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
arecon-literature-synthesis
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
604 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when systematically gathering, reading, and synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding…

  • Works in 5 steps: Seed set. Start from the pitch's key… → Forward + backward snowball. Backward:… → Keyword + JEL-code sweep. Search EconLit… → …
  • Systematically gathering
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, Coverage discipline: read the…, From reading to synthesis (not… and Synthesis depth vs. ARE's…, plus 3 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Arecon Literature Synthesis is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when systematically gathering, reading, and synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding citation gaps. Builds the evidence corpus and synthesis notes; it does not impose the analytical spine (arecon-organizing-framework) or appraise study credibility (arecon-evidence-standards).

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Research & Science, covering Citation management. The repository describes itself as: Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. | 覆盖主流期刊的… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Systematically gathering
  • Synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding citation gaps

Example prompts

  • “/arecon-literature-synthesis”

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Seed set. Start from the pitch's key references and the field's canonical pieces.
  2. Forward + backward snowball. Backward: every paper's reference list. Forward: who cites the seeds (Google Scholar / Scopus). Iterate until…
  3. Keyword + JEL-code sweep. Search EconLit / RePEc / NBER / SSRN by topic keywords and by the relevant JEL classification codes, to catch…
  4. Working papers + adjacent fields. A current review must include recent working papers (the frontier) and the bordering literatures the…
  5. Saturation log. Record when each search stops yielding new must-cite work — this is your evidence of comprehensiveness for the balance…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 932eb23. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Arecon Literature Synthesis loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 98 tokens; SKILL.md has 604 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~98
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills at commit 932eb23, republished under its MIT licence (© brycewang-stanford). 604 words, ~1,352 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
arecon-literature-synthesis
description
Use when systematically gathering, reading, and synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding citation gaps. Builds the evidence corpus and synthesis notes; it does not impose the analytical spine (arecon-organizing-framework) or appraise study credibility (arecon-evidence-standards).

Literature Synthesis (arecon-literature-synthesis)

When to trigger

  • The invitation is secured and it is time to read the field thoroughly
  • Reading feels unsystematic; you fear missing important contributions an adjacent economist would expect
  • You have many papers but no way to weigh, compare, or reconcile their findings
  • A Committee referee is likely to ask "why did you omit X / the Y literature?"

Coverage discipline: read the field, not a convenience sample

An ARE review's credibility rests on the reader's belief that you read everything that matters — and ARE referees are often the very authors whose work is being weighed, so gaps are noticed. Build coverage systematically rather than from memory:

  1. Seed set. Start from the pitch's key references and the field's canonical pieces.
  2. Forward + backward snowball. Backward: every paper's reference list. Forward: who cites the seeds (Google Scholar / Scopus). Iterate until new searches stop turning up unseen important work (saturation).
  3. Keyword + JEL-code sweep. Search EconLit / RePEc / NBER / SSRN by topic keywords and by the relevant JEL classification codes, to catch work indexed under adjacent labels.
  4. Working papers + adjacent fields. A current review must include recent working papers (the frontier) and the bordering literatures the field draws on, or referees flag staleness and siloing. ARE's annual cadence makes frontier coverage especially visible — a review that stops at last year's published work reads as dated on arrival.
  5. Saturation log. Record when each search stops yielding new must-cite work — this is your evidence of comprehensiveness for the balance audit in arecon-evidence-standards.

From reading to synthesis (not summary)

Summarizing is restating each paper; synthesizing is making the papers talk to each other. Maintain an evidence matrix as you read:

ColumnWhat to capture
Studyauthor–year, the result you will cite it for
Question/estimandexactly what it measures (so non-comparable studies are not pooled)
Method/datadesign and sample (so you can weight credibility)
Findingdirection + magnitude (for who-found-what tables)
Credibilityidentification strength, sample, robustness — your appraisal, since ARE runs no new estimates
Tensionwhich other studies it agrees/conflicts with, and why

This matrix is the raw material for the organizing framework, the summary tables, and the even-handed treatment of controversies. Crucially, you appraise primary studies — you are the field's referee-of-record for adjacent readers — you do not re-estimate them.

Show full SKILL.md (227 more words)Show less

Synthesis depth vs. ARE's accessibility mandate

Unlike a Handbook chapter (exhaustive) or a JEL survey (deeper and longer), an ARE review must stay readable by an outsider in ~25–40 pages (检索于 2026-06;以官网为准). So the matrix serves a second purpose: it lets you cite the confirmatory tier in clusters while reserving prose for the field-defining work. Read exhaustively; write selectively. Coverage is proven by the citation set; accessibility is exercised in the prose.

Checklist

  • Seed set drawn from canonical pieces + pitch references
  • Forward and backward snowball iterated to saturation
  • EconLit / RePEc / NBER / SSRN swept by keyword and JEL code
  • Recent working papers and adjacent literatures included (no staleness, no silo)
  • Saturation log records where searches stopped yielding new must-cites
  • Evidence matrix captures estimand + method + finding + credibility appraisal + tensions
  • Non-comparable studies flagged as such (not pooled into a false consensus)
  • No major author/school whose omission a Committee referee could name

Anti-patterns

  • Citing from memory or from a personal reading list (predictable coverage gaps the surveyed authors will spot)
  • Summarizing paper-by-paper instead of synthesizing across papers
  • Pooling studies that estimate different objects into one "the literature finds…" claim
  • Ignoring working papers (looks stale at an annual cadence) or ignoring adjacent fields (looks siloed)
  • Re-running or "correcting" primary studies — an ARE review appraises, it does not re-estimate
  • Leaning on review databases without the JEL-code sweep that catches adjacently-indexed work

Output format

text
【Seed set】<canonical + pitch references>
【Snowball status】backward/forward iterated to saturation? Y/N
【Databases swept】EconLit / RePEc / NBER / SSRN — by keyword + JEL code? Y/N
【Frontier + adjacency】recent WPs and bordering literatures included? Y/N
【Saturation evidence】<where searches stopped yielding new must-cites>
【Evidence matrix】rows ready with estimand / method / finding / appraisal / tension? Y/N
【Coverage risks】<any author/school an omission referee could name>
【Next step】→ arecon-organizing-framework (impose the analytical spine on the matrix)

© brycewang-stanford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in Annual-Review-of-Economics-Skills/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

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Questions about Arecon Literature Synthesis

What does Arecon Literature Synthesis do?

A skill your agent uses when systematically gathering, reading, and synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding…. Arecon Literature Synthesis is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when systematically gathering, reading, and synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding citation gaps.

When should I use Arecon Literature Synthesis?

Arecon Literature Synthesis fits situations like: systematically gathering; synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding citation gaps.

How do I install Arecon Literature Synthesis in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill arecon-literature-synthesis -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (Annual-Review-of-Economics-Skills/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Arecon Literature Synthesis in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill arecon-literature-synthesis -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (Annual-Review-of-Economics-Skills/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Arecon Literature Synthesis in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill arecon-literature-synthesis -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis, .gemini/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis, .github/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis and .opencode/skills/arecon-literature-synthesis in your project.

What does Arecon Literature Synthesis need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Arecon Literature Synthesis is instructions for the agent only.

Does Arecon Literature Synthesis access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Arecon Literature Synthesis safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Arecon Literature Synthesis use?

Arecon Literature Synthesis is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Arecon Literature Synthesis use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.4k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Arecon Literature Synthesis?

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Who maintains Arecon Literature Synthesis?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,231 GitHub stars. The repository holds 2,387 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 27, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.