paper-reader
Read abstracts and, when available, full text to extract structured evidence for literature screening. Use when a paper is ambiguous after abstract screening or the user needs method, dataset, supervision, or limitation details.
Best use case
paper-reader is best used when you need a repeatable AI agent workflow instead of a one-off prompt.
Read abstracts and, when available, full text to extract structured evidence for literature screening. Use when a paper is ambiguous after abstract screening or the user needs method, dataset, supervision, or limitation details.
Teams using paper-reader should expect a more consistent output, faster repeated execution, less prompt rewriting.
When to use this skill
- You want a reusable workflow that can be run more than once with consistent structure.
When not to use this skill
- You only need a quick one-off answer and do not need a reusable workflow.
- You cannot install or maintain the underlying files, dependencies, or repository context.
Installation
Claude Code / Cursor / Codex
Manual Installation
- Download SKILL.md from GitHub
- Place it in
.claude/skills/paper-reader/SKILL.mdinside your project - Restart your AI agent — it will auto-discover the skill
How paper-reader Compares
| Feature / Agent | paper-reader | Standard Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Platform Support | Not specified | Limited / Varies |
| Context Awareness | High | Baseline |
| Installation Complexity | Unknown | N/A |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does this skill do?
Read abstracts and, when available, full text to extract structured evidence for literature screening. Use when a paper is ambiguous after abstract screening or the user needs method, dataset, supervision, or limitation details.
Where can I find the source code?
You can find the source code on GitHub using the link provided at the top of the page.
SKILL.md Source
# paper-reader
## Name
paper-reader
## Description
Read abstracts and, when available, full text to extract evidence relevant to literature screening. This skill is for second-stage review, not just summarization.
## Use When
- the user needs evidence from full text
- the workflow needs method, dataset, or supervision details
- a paper is ambiguous after abstract screening
- local PDFs or text files are available for deeper review
## Inputs
- normalized paper metadata
- local file paths when present
- abstract text
- screening criteria
## Outputs
- structured evidence entries
- abstract summary
- extracted method, dataset, task, supervision, and limitation notes
- explicit notice when full text is unavailable
## Workflow
1. Start from existing metadata and abstract.
2. If full text is available locally, parse it.
3. Extract evidence for:
- task
- method
- dataset
- supervision or annotation
- limitations
4. Attach evidence with section, excerpt, note, and confidence.
5. If only abstract is available, say so explicitly and keep confidence conservative.
## Guardrails
- Do not pretend full text was read if it was not available.
- Distinguish abstract evidence from full-text evidence.
- Prefer short, attributable excerpts over vague claims.
- If parser output is poor or missing, mark the paper as needing manual review.
## Online And Offline Behavior
- `online`: may retrieve metadata remotely, but evidence extraction should still depend on actual accessible text
- `offline`: use local PDFs, text extracts, or metadata files
- when full text is unavailable in either mode, report the gap explicitly
## Example
Expected extracted fields:
```json
{
"method": "Transformer with gaze-supervised attention head",
"dataset": "BDD-100K-derived driving videos",
"supervision": "human gaze maps",
"limitations": "No night-scene evaluation reported"
}
```Related Skills
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paper-reach
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template-academic-paper-reviewer
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proofreader
Use this skill when reviewing written content for grammar, spelling, punctuation, style consistency, and tone—before publishing, submitting, or sending. Trigger phrases: 'proofread this', 'check my writing', 'review this for errors', 'edit this email/report/essay'. Do NOT use when structural rewrites or content changes are needed—proofreading fixes surface errors, not substantive problems.
pdf-reader
Use when reading PDF papers, reports, or long documents where text, figures, and tables must all be captured and chunk-summarized without truncation. Converts PDF to a markdown + paper_content.json workspace, extracts figures and tables as standalone files, then delegates to arxiv-latex-reader's progressive two-layer reading (section index + on-demand deep reads). Triggers: "read pdf", "pdf to markdown", "summarize pdf", "pdf paper", "extract figures from pdf", "extract tables from pdf", "marker pdf", "pymupdf", "docling", "paper digest", "pdf reader"
github-reader
Use when reading a GitHub repository (especially a research code release with an accompanying paper) and producing a faithful digest that covers the implementation logic, the main insight, and the key reported results. Research-first with graceful fallback for non-paper repos. Handles arXiv link detection and delegates paper reading to arxiv-latex-reader / pdf-reader. Triggers: "read repo", "read this github", "analyze github", "digest repo", "github reader", "extract from github", "summarize this codebase", "read this code", "https://github.com/"
blog-reader
Use when reading a long technical blog post (ML research, engineering deep-dives, Distill/Lil'Log-style posts) and producing a faithful, figure-aware summary. Handles context-over-limit via section-based chunking, captures important figures via multimodal Read, and runs a coverage test to catch missing information. Triggers: "read this blog", "summarize this post", "read blog", "digest this article", "long blog post", "read this article", "blog summary", "distill post", "summarize url", "chunk and summarize"
arxiv-latex-reader
Use when reading large arxiv papers without context overflow. Progressive two-layer reading: index all sections (~2k tokens), then deep-read on demand. Never truncates. Triggers: "read paper", "paper sections", "section index", "progressive reading", "paper_content.json", "section summary"