literature-engine

Claude Code skills for rigorous academic literature research — enforces full-text reading, prevents shallow abstract-only analysis.

Skill Tiers

Skill	Depth	When to Use
literature-overview	Shallow	Quick landscape scan — what papers exist on a topic
literature-search	Medium	Literature survey — read AI summaries, understand methods and contributions
literature-research	Deep	Rigorous analysis — read raw full text, extract specific details

How It Works

Each skill enforces a HARD-GATE appropriate to its depth:

Tier	HARD-GATE Rule
Overview	Do NOT draw conclusions from abstracts — orientation only
Search	MUST read AI summary report for every paper analyzed
Research	MUST read raw full text — AI summaries not acceptable

This prevents the common failure mode where an AI assistant treats abstracts as sufficient evidence for research conclusions.

Tool Responsibility Matrix

Tool	Role
alphaxiv.discover_papers	Primary search — arXiv semantic search
ss.relevanceSearch	Supplementary search — non-arXiv papers
ss.paper / ss.paperBatch	Metadata enrichment — citation count, DOI, S2 ID
ss.citations / ss.references	Citation graph traversal
alphaxiv.get_paper_content (fullText: false)	AI-generated summary report
alphaxiv.get_paper_content (fullText: true)	Raw full text
alphaxiv.answer_pdf_queries	Targeted questions against PDF content

MCP Server Setup

alphaxiv

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alphaxiv": {
      "type": "sse",
      "url": "https://mcp.alphaxiv.org"
    }
  }
}

No API key required (public SSE endpoint).

Scope: arXiv papers only (computer science, mathematics, physics, statistics, quantitative biology/finance, electrical engineering). Does NOT cover biomedical, clinical, or life science papers.

semantic-scholar

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "semantic-scholar": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@yogsoth-ai/semantic-scholar-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SS_API_KEY": "<your-key-here>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Get an API key at: https://www.semanticscholar.org/product/api (optional — increases rate limit from 1 req/s to 100 req/s)

Usage

literature-overview (quick scan)

Use when you need to:

• Quickly assess how much literature exists on a topic
• Identify key papers and authors
• Get citation counts to gauge impact
• Decide which papers deserve deeper reading

literature-search (survey)

Use when you need to:

• Conduct a literature survey
• Understand what methods exist and how they compare
• Identify gaps in current research
• Build background knowledge

literature-research (deep analysis)

Use when you need to:

• Understand exact methodology details (equations, algorithms)
• Extract specific experimental setup (hyperparameters, datasets)
• Design experiments based on prior work
• Write a paper that cites specific claims with precision

Project Structure

literature-engine/
├── skills/
│   ├── literature-overview/
│   │   └── SKILL.md          # Shallow — landscape scan
│   ├── literature-search/
│   │   └── SKILL.md          # Medium — AI summary reading
│   └── literature-research/
│       └── SKILL.md          # Deep — raw full text reading
├── tests/
│   └── integration-prompt.md # Live integration test prompt
├── assets/
│   └── repo-info.txt
├── README.md
├── .gitignore
└── LICENSE

Version

v1.1.0 — Three depth-tiered skills (overview, search, research)

📄 License

Apache-2.0