Papers Skill for Claude
Searches academic literature via arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and open-access PDFs. Use when building literature reviews or finding formal research on a topic.
Install
one command, takes just this skill from the repositorynpx skills add https://github.com/athola/claude-night-market --skill papersThe instruction itself
9 sections, as written by the authorAcademic Papers Search
When To Use
- Finding academic papers, citations, or formal research
- Building literature reviews or citation chains
When NOT To Use
- Community opinions (use
/tome:discourse) - Code implementations (use
/tome:code-search)
Search arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and open-access sources.
Sources (Priority Order)
- arXiv API (free, unlimited metadata)
- Semantic Scholar API (100 req/5min, citation graphs)
- Unpaywall (legal free version discovery)
- CORE.ac.uk (open-access aggregator)
- PubMed Central (biomedical)
- Author preprint pages (WebSearch fallback)
PDF Processing
After acquiring a paper URL or local file path, convert
the PDF to markdown for better extraction quality.
Conversion (prefer markitdown)
Apply the leyline:document-conversion protocol:
- Try markitdown first: call the MCP
convert_to_markdown
tool with the PDF URL or file:// path. This produces
structured markdown preserving tables, equations, figures,
and section hierarchy.
- Fall back to Read tool if markitdown is unavailable:
- Read with
pages: "1-20"for the first chunk - Continue with
pages: "21-40"for longer papers - Continue in 20-page increments as needed
- Note: tables and figures will not extract as cleanly
Extraction Targets
From the converted markdown, extract:
- Abstract and key findings
- Methodology and experimental setup
- Results tables and figures
- Citation information (authors, year, venue)
- Key equations or formal definitions
Fallback Guidance
When a paper is paywalled and no open version exists:
- Public library JSTOR/ProQuest access via library card
- DeepDyve article rental
- Inter-library loan request
- Direct author email template
Exit Criteria
- [ ] At least one academic source queried in priority order
(arXiv first, then Semantic Scholar, then Unpaywall/CORE/PubMed)
- [ ] PDF content converted via
leyline:document-conversion
protocol: markitdown MCP attempted first, Read-tool fallback
used if markitdown is unavailable
- [ ] Each paper result includes citation info (authors, year, venue)
and an abstract or key findings summary
- [ ] Paywalled papers with no open version trigger the fallback
guidance (library, DeepDyve, ILL, author contact) rather than
returning an empty result
- [ ] If all sources return zero results, this is stated explicitly
rather than generating fabricated paper entries
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How to use it
Take athola/papers from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal
use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.
The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the
same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.