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Agent skill

Papers Skill

by sickn33 in sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills

Skill for academic research workflows: search Semantic Scholar (200M+ papers), inspect citations, download arXiv PDFs, and extract PDF text.

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Papers Skill

skills CLI
$ npx skills add sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills --skill papers-skill -a claude-code

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

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills papers-skill --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/sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/papers-skill .claude/skills/papers-skill && 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
papers-skill
GitHub stars
47k
Used in
1 other repo
Token cost
~2.1k tokens
SKILL.md length
956 words
Files
2 (incl. scripts)
Skills in repo
1,394
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Skill for academic research workflows: search Semantic Scholar (200M+ papers), inspect citations, download arXiv PDFs, and extract PDF text.

  • Works in 3 steps: Verify dependencies → Invoke the bundled CLI → Pick the right subcommand
  • Tasks that involve Academic paper search
  • SKILL.md covers Overview, When to Use This Skill, Do Not Use This Skill When and How It Works, plus 6 more sections
  • Runs Python scripts from its folder; calls python

What it does

Papers Skill is an agent skill from sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills. Skill for academic research workflows: search Semantic Scholar (200M+ papers), inspect citations, download arXiv PDFs, and extract PDF text. Bundles a self-contained Python CLI.

Its SKILL.md is about 2.1k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 2 other files, including scripts (for example `scripts/papers.py`).

It sits in Research & Science, covering Academic paper search, PDF and Citation management. It works with arXiv, Python, Semantic Scholar and Model Context Protocol. The repository describes itself as: AAS Core is the local, agent-first control plane for complete catalog discovery, agent-owned selection, stack validation, and planning, backed by 2,400+ agentic skills. Includes… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Academic paper search
  • Tasks that involve PDF
  • Tasks that involve Citation management

Example prompts

  • “/papers-skill”

Requirements

  • Python 3

Workflow steps

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

  1. Verify dependencies
  2. Invoke the bundled CLI
  3. Pick the right subcommand

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 1e53ce2. 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

    Ships 1 file in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • python

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

  • Network

    Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

    • github.com
    • api.semanticscholar.org
    • info.arxiv.org
    • pymupdf.readthedocs.io

    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

Papers Skill loads about 2.1k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 48 tokens; SKILL.md has 956 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~48
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.1k

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); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills at commit 1e53ce2, republished under its MIT licence (© sickn33). 956 words, ~2,088 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/papers-skill/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
papers-skill
description
Skill for academic research workflows: search Semantic Scholar (200M+ papers), inspect citations, download arXiv PDFs, and extract PDF text. Bundles a self-contained Python CLI.
category
research
risk
safe
source
community
source_repo
xwmxcz/papers-skill
source_type
community
date_added
2026-06-11
author
xwmxcz
tags
research, academic, papers, citations, arxiv, semantic-scholar, pdf
tools
claude-code, antigravity, cursor, gemini-cli, codex-cli, opencode
license
MIT

Papers Skill

Overview

Papers Skill turns a coding agent into a literature-research assistant. It orchestrates a bundled Python CLI (scripts/papers.py) that hits the free Semantic Scholar and arXiv APIs, downloads arXiv PDFs, and extracts text with PyMuPDF. The agent decides which subcommand to invoke and how to combine results into a literature scan, a deep read of one paper, an impact analysis, or a reading list.

This skill is the Skill-mode port of the papers-mcp MCP server by the same author. Both projects share the same feature set; this one ships as a Claude Code plugin so it can be installed with a single command and needs no long-running MCP process.

When to Use This Skill

  • Use when the user asks to search academic papers by topic, author, or venue.
  • Use when the user names a specific paper (by DOI, arXiv ID, or title) and wants metadata, the abstract, the TL;DR, or its reference list.
  • Use when the user wants to find work that cites a known paper (impact analysis, follow-up tracking).
  • Use when the user wants to download an arXiv PDF and have it summarized.
  • Use when the user asks to build a reading list around a topic.

Do Not Use This Skill When

  • The user wants paywalled non-arXiv full text. This skill cannot bypass publisher paywalls; it can only fetch arXiv PDFs and metadata everywhere.
  • The user wants OCR over scanned PDFs. PyMuPDF extracts embedded text only; scanned image-PDFs return the fallback message and need a separate OCR step.
  • The user wants real-time citation alerts or RSS-style watching. This skill is request-driven.

How It Works

Step 1: Verify dependencies

Three Python packages are required. The skill should check once per session, using the same interpreter to import-check and install so the dependency check and install target stay in sync:

bash
python -c "import httpx, arxiv, fitz" 2>&1 || python -m pip install httpx arxiv PyMuPDF

If python is not on PATH, fall back to py (Windows launcher) or the absolute interpreter path — and remember to invoke pip via the same interpreter, e.g. py -m pip install httpx arxiv PyMuPDF.

Step 2: Invoke the bundled CLI

The script lives at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py and is bundled with this skill (no separate install needed). Always quote the path so it survives spaces.

bash
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py" <subcommand> [args]
Step 3: Pick the right subcommand
SubcommandPurposeExample
search <query> [--limit N]Semantic Scholar search, max 20search "diffusion models" --limit 5
detail <paper_id>Full metadata, TL;DR, top referencesdetail 10.48550/arXiv.2310.06825
citations <paper_id> [--limit N]Papers citing this one, max 20citations <id> --limit 15
arxiv <query> [--max-results N]arXiv preprint search, max 10arxiv "RLHF" --max-results 5
download <arxiv_id> [--save-dir D]Save PDF locallydownload 2310.06825 --save-dir ./pdfs
read <pdf_path> [--max-pages N]Extract PDF text via PyMuPDFread ./pdfs/foo.pdf --max-pages 20

detail and citations auto-detect the ID type: DOIs starting with 10. are used as-is, bare numeric IDs of 10+ digits are treated as arXiv IDs, and long hex strings are treated as Semantic Scholar paperIds.

Examples

Example 1: Literature scan on a topic
bash
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py" search "retrieval augmented generation" --limit 10

Present results as a ranked table with # | Title | Year | Citations | ID, then ask the user which papers to dig into.

Example 2: Deep-read one paper
bash
# 1. Confirm match
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py" detail 2005.11401
# 2. Download
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py" download 2005.11401 --save-dir ./pdfs
# 3. Extract abstract + intro + conclusion
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py" read ./pdfs/2005.11401v4.RAG.pdf --max-pages 10

Summarize as: problem · method · key result · limitations.

Example 3: Impact analysis on an anchor paper
bash
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py" detail 10.48550/arXiv.2005.11401
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-skill/scripts/papers.py" citations 10.48550/arXiv.2005.11401 --limit 20

Cluster the citing papers by year/theme and highlight the most-cited follow-ups.

Show full SKILL.md (415 more words)Show less

Best Practices

  • ✅ Always call detail before download to confirm the paper matches user intent. Skipping this leads to wrong PDFs being fetched.
  • ✅ Include the paper ID alongside every title in your output so the user can re-query precisely.
  • ✅ Cite as [FirstAuthor et al., Year] *Title* (cites: N).
  • ✅ For PDFs you download, always report the absolute save path.
  • ❌ Don't crawl. The script auto-retries 429s with exponential backoff; don't pile on parallel queries.
  • ❌ Don't raise --max-pages to 100+ without warning the user — it can consume a large amount of context.

Limitations

  • The skill cannot fetch full text from paywalled publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, etc.). It can only read open arXiv PDFs.
  • PyMuPDF extracts embedded text only. Scanned image-PDFs return the fallback message PDF无法提取文本（可能是扫描件）; offer the user an alternative version or note that OCR is required.
  • Semantic Scholar's anonymous tier rate-limits aggressively. The script retries 3× with exponential backoff; persistent 429s during heavy use surface as 搜索失败: rate limit, retries exhausted.
  • This skill does not replace environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review. Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs are missing.

Security & Safety Notes

  • The CLI performs outbound HTTPS only to api.semanticscholar.org and arxiv.org (and the arXiv-listed mirror for the bundled arxiv package). No authentication tokens are sent.
  • download writes a PDF to the directory the user specifies (default: the current working directory). Confirm the save path with the user before downloading to an unexpected location.
  • read opens a local PDF file with PyMuPDF — make sure the path the user supplies is one they trust.
  • No credentials or API keys are needed or stored anywhere.

Common Pitfalls

  • Problem: 需要安装 arxiv: pip install arxiv or 需要安装 PyMuPDF: pip install PyMuPDF. Solution: The script returns this friendly message instead of crashing when an optional dependency is missing. Offer to run the install command.

  • Problem: 搜索失败: rate limit, retries exhausted from search or detail or citations. Solution: Semantic Scholar is rate-limiting. Wait ~10 seconds and retry once. For repeated runs, fall back to arxiv for arXiv-indexed work.

  • Problem: download fails with 找不到 arXiv ID: …. Solution: The user gave a non-arXiv ID (likely a DOI for a non-arXiv paper). Use detail to inspect; only papers with an externalIds.ArXiv field can be downloaded.

  • Problem: Garbled Chinese output on Windows. Solution: The script already forces UTF-8 stdout. If the host terminal is still misconfigured, set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8 in the shell environment.

Additional Resources

© sickn33, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (scripts) in skills/papers-skill of sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • scripts/papers.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 1e53ce2

Used in 1 other repository

We found 5 copies of this SKILL.md (exact, near-identical or edited) in other folders, from 1 other GitHub owner. This page covers the copy in sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills, which our catalogue first saw on October 7, 2026.

Compare with similar skills

Papers Skill 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.

Papers Skill compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Papers Skill this skillsickn33/agentic-awesome-skills47k1 repos~2.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Ref Downloaderltczding-gif/ref-downloader139—~5.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Paper Research on arXivXiaomiMiMo/MiMo-Code14k1 repos~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Arxiv MCP Serverblazickjp/arxiv-mcp-server3.2k—~353Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Nature Academic Searchjing1312/nature-figure-skill161—~1.3kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT
Literature ReviewK-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills48k1 repos~3.2kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT

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Works with

Categories

Questions about Papers Skill

What does Papers Skill do?

Skill for academic research workflows: search Semantic Scholar (200M+ papers), inspect citations, download arXiv PDFs, and extract PDF text. Papers Skill is an agent skill from sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills. Skill for academic research workflows: search Semantic Scholar (200M+ papers), inspect citations, download arXiv PDFs, and extract PDF text.

When should I use Papers Skill?

Papers Skill fits situations like: tasks that involve Academic paper search; tasks that involve PDF; tasks that involve Citation management.

How do I install Papers Skill in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills --skill papers-skill -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/papers-skill in sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills) into .claude/skills/papers-skill in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Papers Skill in Codex?

Run `npx skills add sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills --skill papers-skill -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/papers-skill in sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills) into .agents/skills/papers-skill in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Papers Skill 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 sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills --skill papers-skill -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/papers-skill, .gemini/skills/papers-skill, .github/skills/papers-skill and .opencode/skills/papers-skill in your project.

What does Papers Skill need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Papers Skill needs Python for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (python). Our summary lists: Python 3.

Does Papers Skill access the network?

SKILL.md names 4 domains. As links in the text: github.com, api.semanticscholar.org, info.arxiv.org and pymupdf.readthedocs.io. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Papers Skill 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. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.

What licence does Papers Skill use?

Papers Skill is published under the MIT licence (declared in SKILL.md). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Papers Skill use?

About 2.1k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 8.4k 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 Papers Skill?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Papers Skill: Ref Downloader (ltczding-gif/ref-downloader, 139 stars), Paper Research on arXiv (XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-Code, 14k stars), Arxiv MCP Server (blazickjp/arxiv-mcp-server, 3.2k stars) and Nature Academic Search (jing1312/nature-figure-skill, 161 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Papers Skill?

sickn33 (a GitHub user) maintains it in sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills, which has 47,304 GitHub stars. The repository holds 1,394 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 6, 2026.

Source: sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.