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Agent skill

Literature Review

by jerry609 in jerry609/PaperBot

This skill should be used when the user asks to "do a literature review", "survey papers on a topic", "search and summarize research on X", "find papers about attention mechanisms", "systematic…

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Literature Review

skills CLI
$ npx skills add jerry609/PaperBot --skill literature-review -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install jerry609/PaperBot literature-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/jerry609/PaperBot.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.claude/skills/literature-review .claude/skills/literature-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
literature-review
GitHub stars
108
Token cost
~976 tokens
SKILL.md length
412 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
4
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

This skill should be used when the user asks to "do a literature review", "survey papers on a topic", "search and summarize research on X", "find papers about attention mechanisms", "systematic…

  • Works in 6 steps: Search for papers → Filter by relevance → Judge quality of relevant papers → …
  • Asks to do a literature review
  • SKILL.md covers Workflow, Degraded Mode and Notes
  • Needs OPENAI_API_KEY and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

What it does

Literature Review is an agent skill from jerry609/PaperBot. This skill should be used when the user asks to "do a literature review", "survey papers on a topic", "search and summarize research on X", "find papers about attention mechanisms", "systematic review of the literature", "what papers exist on Y", or wants a multi-step workflow to search, filter by relevance, score quality, and summarize academic papers using PaperBot MCP tools.

Its SKILL.md is about 980 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 Literature review and Academic paper search. It works with arXiv. The repository describes itself as: Academic Personal AI Infrastructure. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Asks to do a literature review
  • Survey papers on a topic
  • Search and summarize research on X
  • Find papers about attention mechanisms

Example prompts

  • “do a literature review”
  • “survey papers on a topic”
  • “search and summarize research on X”
  • “/literature-review”

Requirements

  • A credential in OPENAI_API_KEY
  • A credential in ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

Workflow steps

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

  1. Search for papers
  2. Filter by relevance
  3. Judge quality of relevant papers
  4. Summarize top papers
  5. Export to Obsidian (optional)
  6. Save synthesis to memory

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 9030c5e. 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 these keys or tokens, usually read from environment variables:

    • OPENAI_API_KEY
    • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

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

Context cost

Literature Review loads about 976 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 100 tokens; SKILL.md has 412 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~100
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~976

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 jerry609/PaperBot at commit 9030c5e, republished under its MIT licence (© jerry609). 412 words, ~976 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/literature-review/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
literature-review
description
This skill should be used when the user asks to "do a literature review", "survey papers on a topic", "search and summarize research on X", "find papers about attention mechanisms", "systematic review of the literature", "what papers exist on Y", or wants a multi-step workflow to search, filter by relevance, score quality, and summarize academic papers using PaperBot MCP tools.
tools
paper_search, relevance_assess, paper_judge, paper_summarize, export_to_obsidian, save_to_memory

Literature Review Workflow

Conduct a systematic literature review: search, filter by relevance, judge quality, summarize top papers, and save findings to memory.

Workflow

Step 1: Search for papers

Call paper_search with the research question or topic.

  • Parameters: query (required), max_results (default 10; use 20–50 for broad surveys), sources (optional; omit for all sources, or specify ["arxiv", "semantic_scholar"])
  • Returns: list of paper dicts with title, abstract, authors, year, venue, arxiv_id, doi
Step 2: Filter by relevance

For each paper, call relevance_assess with title, abstract, and the same query.

  • Parameters: title, abstract, query, keywords (optional comma-separated terms)
  • Returns: dict with score (0–100) and reason
  • Suggested threshold: discard papers with score below 40
  • If degraded=True, token-overlap scoring is used (less accurate but functional)
Step 3: Judge quality of relevant papers

For papers above the relevance threshold, call paper_judge.

  • Parameters: title, abstract, full_text (optional), rubric (default "default"; pass the research question for context-aware judging)
  • Returns: dimension scores (1–5), overall_score, recommendation (must_read / worth_reading / skim / skip)
  • Prioritize papers with must_read and worth_reading recommendations
Step 4: Summarize top papers

Call paper_summarize for papers recommended as must_read or worth_reading.

  • Parameters: title, abstract
  • Returns: dict with summary key (concise string)
  • If degraded=True, generate a manual summary from the abstract text
Step 5: Export to Obsidian (optional)

Call export_to_obsidian for papers to save as permanent Obsidian notes.

  • Parameters: title, abstract, authors (list), year, venue, arxiv_id, doi (provide whichever identifiers are available)
  • Returns: dict with markdown key — YAML-frontmattered note ready to write to vault
Show full SKILL.md (169 more words)Show less
Step 6: Save synthesis to memory

Call save_to_memory with a synthesis of findings across all reviewed papers.

  • Parameters: content (synthesis text), kind ("note" for general observations, "hypothesis" for research directions), user_id (default "default"), scope_type ("global" unless scoping to a specific research track), scope_id (required if scope_type="track"), confidence (0.0–1.0)
  • Returns: dict with created or skipped status

Degraded Mode

paper_judge, paper_summarize, and relevance_assess require a configured LLM API key. paper_search works without LLM and returns raw search results in all cases.

When any LLM-backed tool returns degraded=True:

  • The response also contains an error key describing the issue
  • Set OPENAI_API_KEY or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and restart the MCP server
  • In degraded mode, proceed with paper_search results only; skip Steps 2–4

Notes

  • For broad surveys (>30 papers), consider running relevance_assess in bulk before paper_judge to reduce LLM calls
  • Use rubric="reproducibility" in paper_judge if the review goal is identifying reproducible papers for implementation
  • The export_to_obsidian step is optional — skip it if the user has not set up an Obsidian vault or does not need persistent notes

© jerry609, 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 .claude/skills/literature-review of jerry609/PaperBot.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 9030c5e

Compare with similar skills

Literature 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.

Literature Review compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Literature Review this skilljerry609/PaperBot108—~976Automated safety check: PassMIT
Literature Reviewneflibata-feng/MyArxiv-Agent12620 repos~5.9kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT
Systematic Literature Review Builderbytedance/deer-flow84k2 repos~4.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Paper Research on arXivXiaomiMiMo/MiMo-Code14k—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Literature Review AgentAr9av/PaperOrchestra6791 repos~5.2kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Arxiv MCP Serverblazickjp/arxiv-mcp-server3.2k—~353Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Works with

Categories

Questions about Literature Review

What does Literature Review do?

This skill should be used when the user asks to "do a literature review", "survey papers on a topic", "search and summarize research on X", "find papers about attention mechanisms", "systematic…. Literature Review is an agent skill from jerry609/PaperBot. This skill should be used when the user asks to "do a literature review", "survey papers on a topic", "search and summarize research on X", "find papers about attention mechanisms", "systematic review of the literature", "what papers exist on Y", or wants a multi-step workflow to search, filter by relevance, score quality, and summarize academic papers using PaperBot MCP tools.

When should I use Literature Review?

Literature Review fits situations like: asks to do a literature review; survey papers on a topic; search and summarize research on X; find papers about attention mechanisms.

How do I install Literature Review in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add jerry609/PaperBot --skill literature-review -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/literature-review in jerry609/PaperBot) into .claude/skills/literature-review in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Literature Review in Codex?

Run `npx skills add jerry609/PaperBot --skill literature-review -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.claude/skills/literature-review in jerry609/PaperBot) into .agents/skills/literature-review in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Literature 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 jerry609/PaperBot --skill literature-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/literature-review, .gemini/skills/literature-review, .github/skills/literature-review and .opencode/skills/literature-review in your project.

What does Literature Review need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Literature Review needs credentials named OPENAI_API_KEY and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. Our summary lists: A credential in OPENAI_API_KEY; A credential in ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.

Does Literature 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 Literature 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 Literature Review use?

Literature Review 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 Literature Review use?

About 976 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.9k 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 Literature Review?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Literature Review: Literature Review (neflibata-feng/MyArxiv-Agent, 126 stars), Systematic Literature Review Builder (bytedance/deer-flow, 84k stars), Paper Research on arXiv (XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-Code, 14k stars) and Literature Review Agent (Ar9av/PaperOrchestra, 679 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Literature Review?

jerry609 (a GitHub user) maintains it in jerry609/PaperBot, which has 108 GitHub stars. The repository holds 4 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on June 16, 2026.

Source: jerry609/PaperBot on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.