Structured literature search and synthesis for the sewage-house-prices project.

Custom licenceAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Lit Review

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill lit-review -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills lit-review --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/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/41-sticerd-eee-sewage-econometrics-check/skills/lit-review .claude/skills/lit-review && 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
lit-review
GitHub stars
4.6k
Token cost
~1.2k tokens
SKILL.md length
353 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
383
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
Custom licence

At a glance

Structured literature search and synthesis for the sewage-house-prices project.

  • Works in 5 steps: Context Gathering → Search Protocol → Assess and Annotate → …
  • Tasks that involve Citation management
  • SKILL.md covers Project-Specific Context and Workflow
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Lit Review is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills. Structured literature search and synthesis for the sewage-house-prices project. Searches top-5 journals, field journals (JEEM, JUE, JREFE, EE), NBER/SSRN, and citation chains. Produces annotated bibliography with proximity scores, gap identification, and BibTeX entries. This skill should be used when asked to "review the literature", "find papers on X", or "lit review".

Its SKILL.md is about 1.2k 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, Literature review and Academic paper search. It works with LaTeX. The repository describes itself as: 🔬 A curated collection of 23,000+ agent skills for empirical research across 8 social science disciplines. | 精选 23,000+ AI Agent 技能库,覆盖8大社会科学学科的实证研究。CoPaper.AI…

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Citation management
  • Tasks that involve Literature review
  • Tasks that involve Academic paper search

Example prompts

  • “review the literature”
  • “find papers on X”
  • “lit review”
  • “/lit-review”

Requirements

  • Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Grep, Glob, Write, WebSearch, WebFetch, Agent

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Context Gathering
  2. Search Protocol
  3. Assess and Annotate
  4. Identify Gaps
  5. Present Results

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 9fa87d8. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

    • Read
    • Grep
    • Glob
    • Write
    • WebSearch
    • WebFetch
    • Agent

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are markdown).

    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

Lit Review loads about 1.2k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 96 tokens; SKILL.md has 353 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~96
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.2k

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

Its licence (Custom licence) doesn't allow us to republish the file, so here is its outline and opening line. It has 353 words (~1,198 tokens).

“Conduct a structured literature search and synthesis for the sewage-house-prices project.”

— opening of SKILL.md by brycewang-stanford, Custom licence
name
lit-review
allowed-tools
Read, Grep, Glob, Write, WebSearch, WebFetch, Agent
argument-hint
[topic, paper title, or research question]

Read the full SKILL.md on GitHub

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/41-sticerd-eee-sewage-econometrics-check/skills/lit-review of brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 9fa87d8

Compare with similar skills

Lit Review next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Lit Review compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Lit Review this skillbrycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills4.6k—~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Literature Review AgentAr9av/PaperOrchestra6791 repos~5.2kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Arxiv MCP Serverblazickjp/arxiv-mcp-server3.2k—~353Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Arxiv Paper Writerappautomaton/latex-arxiv-SKILL458—~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Arxiv Paper Writeryunshenwuchuxun/latex-paper-skills267—~3.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Literature ReviewNorman-bury/research-writing-skill3.4k—~2.2kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT

Similar skills

  • Literature Review Agent

    Ar9av/PaperOrchestra

    Step 3 of the PaperOrchestra pipeline (arXiv:2604.05018). An agent skill from Ar9av/PaperOrchestra.

    679 GitHub starsUsed in 1 repo~5.2k tokens
    Research & ScienceAuto-check passed
  • Arxiv MCP Server

    blazickjp/arxiv-mcp-server

    A skill your agent uses when finding, comparing, reading, or monitoring arXiv papers, including requests for abstracts, citation graphs, original LaTeX, section-level technical details, or…

    3.2k GitHub stars~353 tokensUpdated 3 days ago
    Research & ScienceAuto-check passed
  • Arxiv Paper Writer

    appautomaton/latex-arxiv-SKILL

    Write LaTeX ML/AI review articles for arXiv using the IEEEtran template and verified BibTeX citations.

    458 GitHub stars~2.3k tokensUpdated 27 days ago
    Research & ScienceAuto-check passed
  • Arxiv Paper Writer

    yunshenwuchuxun/latex-paper-skills

    Writes ML/AI review and survey papers for arXiv using the IEEEtran LaTeX template with verified BibTeX citations.

    267 GitHub stars~3.2k tokensUpdated 6 mo ago
    Research & ScienceAuto-check passed
  • Literature Review

    Norman-bury/research-writing-skill

    A skill your agent uses when writing literature review sections - guides searching, organizing, and synthesizing academic sources

    3.4k GitHub stars~2.2k tokensUpdated 4 mo ago
    Research & ScienceAuto-check: notes
  • Turn a research question into an annotated reading list with provenance.

    212 GitHub stars~3.5k tokensUpdated today
    Research & ScienceAuto-check passed

More from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

All 383 skills in this repo
  • Aer Consistency

    brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when auditing a finished or near-finished AER, AER:Insights, or AEJ manuscript for internal consistency: headline numbers across abstract, introduction, results, and tables…

    4.6k GitHub starsUsed in 1 repo~2.6k tokens
    Auto-check passed
  • Latex Paper En

    brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    English LaTeX academic paper assistant for existing .tex projects.

    4.6k GitHub starsUsed in 1 repo~2.2k tokens
    Auto-check passed
  • Bayesian Workflow

    brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Opinionated Bayesian modeling workflow with PyMC and ArviZ. An agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills.

    4.6k GitHub stars~3.5k tokensUpdated 6 days ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Daily Paper Generator

    brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when the user asks to "generate daily paper", "search arXiv for EEG papers", "find EEG decoding papers", "review brain-computer interface papers", or wants to create paper…

    4.6k GitHub stars~2.2k tokensUpdated 6 days ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Five Questions

    brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    Deeply analyze any empirical economics PDF using the five-question framework (五问框架): research question, identification strategy, core estimand, robustness logic, and scholarly contribution.

    4.6k GitHub stars~1.7k tokensUpdated 6 days ago
    Auto-check: notes
  • Kaggle Research

    brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

    A skill your agent uses when a research task needs reproducible Kaggle discovery, metadata inspection, bounded public-data downloads, competition or kernel discovery, model discovery, or an…

    4.6k GitHub stars~868 tokensUpdated 6 days ago
    Auto-check passed

Works with

Questions about Lit Review

What does Lit Review do?

Structured literature search and synthesis for the sewage-house-prices project. Lit Review is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills. Structured literature search and synthesis for the sewage-house-prices project.

When should I use Lit Review?

Lit Review fits situations like: tasks that involve Citation management; tasks that involve Literature review; tasks that involve Academic paper search.

How do I install Lit Review in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill lit-review -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/41-sticerd-eee-sewage-econometrics-check/skills/lit-review in brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills) into .claude/skills/lit-review in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Lit Review in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill lit-review -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/41-sticerd-eee-sewage-econometrics-check/skills/lit-review in brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills) into .agents/skills/lit-review in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Lit Review 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/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill lit-review -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/lit-review, .gemini/skills/lit-review, .github/skills/lit-review and .opencode/skills/lit-review in your project.

What does Lit Review need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Lit Review is instructions for the agent only. Its frontmatter pre-approves these tools: Read, Grep, Glob, Write, WebSearch, WebFetch, Agent.

Does Lit Review 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 Lit Review 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 Lit Review use?

Lit Review has a licence file (the repository's licence) that doesn't match a standard licence. Read it on GitHub before reusing the skill.

How many tokens does Lit Review use?

About 1.2k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 4.8k 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 Lit Review?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Lit Review: Literature Review Agent (Ar9av/PaperOrchestra, 679 stars), Arxiv MCP Server (blazickjp/arxiv-mcp-server, 3.2k stars), Arxiv Paper Writer (appautomaton/latex-arxiv-SKILL, 458 stars) and Arxiv Paper Writer (yunshenwuchuxun/latex-paper-skills, 267 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Lit Review?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills, which has 4,556 GitHub stars. The repository holds 383 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 5, 2026.

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