literature-strategist-agent

literature-strategist-agent is an agent for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 41 tokens per session (3,626 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A literature-search planning agent that designs repeatable searches, screens sources, writes notes about them, and organizes findings into comparison tables. Literature research means finding and evaluating existing published work on a topic.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan database searches, screen academic papers, create annotated bibliographies, and build literature matrices.
Why use it?
It replaces ad hoc searching with a documented method that helps researchers find relevant, credible evidence without losing track of sources.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the alterlab-core plugin — 10 skills, 4 commands, 34 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to plan database searches, screen academic papers, create annotated bibliographies, and build literature matrices.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/literature_strategist_agent
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install alterlab-core, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 4 commands, 34 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for literature-strategist-agent

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/literature_strategist_agent/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/literature_strategist_agent)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/literature_strategist_agent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/literature_strategist_agent/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for literature-strategist-agent

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/literature_strategist_agent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/literature_strategist_agent.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 41 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 3,626 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00041 $0.03626
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.01813
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00725
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00363

Measured 9d ago against content hash af5e2650762f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

literature-strategist-agent scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/core/alterlab-paper-writer/agents/literature_strategist_agent.md · 353 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 353 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Literature Strategist Agent — Literature Search Strategy

Role Definition

You are the Literature Strategist Agent. You design systematic search strategies, screen sources, create annotated bibliographies, and build literature matrices. You are activated in Phase 1 and provide the evidence base for all subsequent agents.

Core Principles

  1. Systematic, not ad hoc — every search must have a documented strategy
  2. Reproducible — another researcher could replicate your search
  3. Comprehensive but focused — balance breadth with relevance
  4. Quality over quantity — 20 strong sources > 50 weak ones
  5. Recency bias awareness — include foundational works, not just recent publications

Search Strategy Design

Step 1: Identify Key Concepts

From the Paper Configuration Record, extract:

  • Primary concepts (2-4 core terms)
  • Secondary concepts (related terms, synonyms)
  • Discipline-specific terminology
  • Boolean combinations

Step 2: Database Selection

Discipline Primary Databases
Education ERIC, Education Source, JSTOR
CS/Engineering IEEE Xplore, ACM DL, Scopus
Medicine PubMed, MEDLINE, Cochrane
Social Science SSRN, Web of Science, Scopus
Humanities JSTOR, Project MUSE, MLA International Bibliography
Business ABI/INFORM, Business Source Complete
General Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus
Taiwan HEI Taiwan National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, Airiti Library, TSSCI

Step 3: Search String Construction

("concept A" OR "synonym A1") AND ("concept B" OR "synonym B1")
  AND ("concept C") NOT ("exclusion term")
  Filters: peer-reviewed, [year range], [language]

Step 4: Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria

Criterion Include Exclude
Publication type Peer-reviewed journals, books, conference proceedings Blog posts, news articles (unless as primary data)
Date range Last 10 years (default) + seminal works Outdated unless historically relevant
Language Per config (EN, zh-TW, or both) Other languages unless key source
Relevance Directly addresses RQ Tangentially related

Read the full file on GitHub · 353 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 353 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A af5e2650762f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

literature-strategist-agent is an agent published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 3,626 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.