research-lit

Search and synthesize academic papers from arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Zotero, and local PDF libraries.

75|7|Updated May 2, 2026
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/zjunlp/Mechanist --skill research-lit-zjunlp
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: research-lit
Source: https://github.com/zjunlp/Mechanist/tree/main/skills/research-lit
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/zjunlp/Mechanist --skill research-lit-zjunlp

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill requires exa-py, and includes scripts (resource) components.

What problem does it solve? Conducting a literature review requires manually querying many disconnected sources — arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Zotero libraries, Obsidian notes, and local PDF folders — then deduplicating and synthesizing the results. This Skill automates that multi-source retrieval and produces a structured landscape report with identified research gaps. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Multi-source paper retrieval: Queries Zotero, Obsidian, local PDFs, a 14k-paper interpretability knowledge graph, web search, and the arXiv API in parallel, with optional Semantic Scholar, DeepXiv, and Exa integrations. - Synthesis and gap analysis: Groups papers by approach, extracts consensus and contradictions, and identifies structural gaps such as untested assumptions and unexplored scaling regimes. - Persistent artifacts: Writes a raw retrieval dump (RESEARCH_LIT.md) and a synthesized landscape report (LANDSCAPE.md) that downstream idea-generation skills consume. - Use Case: Ask for a literature review on "activation steering in LLMs" and receive a deduplicated paper table, a narrative summary of the field, and a list of open research gaps saved to disk. ## Quick Start Ask the agent to run a literature review on your research topic, for example: find papers and summarize related work on mechanistic interpretability of transformer attention heads.

Frequently Asked Questions about research-lit

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I search arXiv papers from the command line in Python?▼

Use the arxiv_fetch.py script with a search subcommand and a query string, optionally limiting results with --max. It calls the arXiv API and returns structured JSON metadata including title, abstract, authors, and categories.

How to find published papers not on arXiv using Semantic Scholar API?▼

Use the semantic_scholar_fetch.py search command with filters like --fields-of-study and --publication-types to surface IEEE, ACM, and Springer venue papers. It returns citation counts, venue metadata, and TLDR summaries that arXiv-only search misses.

Does the literature search work if Zotero or Obsidian is not configured?▼

Yes, the workflow degrades gracefully. If a Zotero or Obsidian MCP server is unavailable, that source is skipped silently and the remaining base sources — local PDFs, web search, arXiv, and the mechanic-db cloud search — still run.

What is the difference between RESEARCH_LIT.md and LANDSCAPE.md outputs?▼

RESEARCH_LIT.md is a raw audit dump of every retrieved paper with verbatim abstracts, intended only for human inspection. LANDSCAPE.md is the synthesized report with a structured paper table, narrative summary, and structural gaps that downstream skills read.

Why does Semantic Scholar search return rate limit errors?▼

Unauthenticated requests to the Semantic Scholar Graph API throttle aggressively with HTTP 429 responses. Set the SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY environment variable for higher rate limits; the script retries 429 and 5xx responses with backoff.