Literature Search Skill for Claude
Search academic literature using Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and OpenAlex APIs. Returns structured JSONL with title, authors, year, venue, abstract, citations, and BibTeX. Use when the user needs to find papers, check related work, or build a bibliography.
Install
one command, takes just this skill from the repositorynpx skills add https://github.com/lingzhi227/agent-research-skills --skill literature-searchThe instruction itself
14 sections, as written by the authorLiterature Search
Search multiple academic databases to find relevant papers.
Input
$ARGUMENTS— The search query (natural language)
Scripts
Semantic Scholar (primary — best for ML/AI, has BibTeX)
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_semantic_scholar.py \
--query "QUERY" --max-results 20 --year-range 2022-2026 \
--api-key "$(grep S2_API_Key /Users/lingzhi/Code/keys.md 2>/dev/null | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ')" \
-o results_s2.jsonl
Key flags: --peer-reviewed-only, --top-conferences, --min-citations N, --venue NeurIPS ICML
arXiv (latest preprints)
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_arxiv.py \
--query "QUERY" --max-results 10 -o results_arxiv.jsonl
OpenAlex (broadest coverage, free, no API key)
python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/search_openalex.py \
--query "QUERY" --max-results 20 --year-range 2022-2026 \
--min-citations 5 -o results_openalex.jsonl
Merge & Deduplicate
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/paper_db.py merge \
--inputs results_s2.jsonl results_arxiv.jsonl results_openalex.jsonl \
--output merged.jsonl
CrossRef (DOI-based lookup, broadest type coverage)
python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/search_crossref.py \
--query "QUERY" --rows 10 --output results_crossref.jsonl
Key flags: --bibtex (output .bib format), --rows N
Download arXiv Source (get .tex files)
python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/download_arxiv_source.py \
--title "Paper Title" --output-dir arxiv_papers/
Key flags: --arxiv-id 1706.03762, --metadata, --max-results N
Generate BibTeX from results
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/bibtex_manager.py \
--jsonl merged.jsonl --output references.bib
Workflow
- Expand the user's query into 2-4 complementary search queries
- Run Semantic Scholar search (primary) with expanded queries
- Run arXiv for very recent preprints (< 3 months)
- Optionally run OpenAlex for broader coverage
- Merge and deduplicate results
- Rank by: citations (0.3) + recency (0.3) + venue quality (0.2) + relevance (0.2)
- Present structured results table
Venue Quality Tiers
Tier 1: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, KDD, AAAI, IJCAI, SIGIR, WWW
Tier 2: AISTATS, UAI, COLT, COLING, EACL, WACV, JMLR, TACL
Tier 3: Workshops, arXiv preprints — mark with (preprint)
Output Format
Present results as a table + detailed entries with BibTeX keys. Always note preprint status.
Related Skills
- Downstream: citation-management, literature-review, related-work-writing
- See also: deep-research, novelty-assessment
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How to use it
Take lingzhi227/literature-search 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.