Traversing Citation Networks

Traversing Citation Networks is a skill for Claude Code from brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills. It costs 22 tokens per session (2,486 once invoked), scanned A, original, no licence file.

A tool for exploring citation networks, the links between research papers and the papers they cite or that cite them. It follows references backward and forward using Semantic Scholar and filters duplicate or less relevant results.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find earlier research cited by a paper, later work that cites it, and a more relevant reading list.
Why use it?
It helps expand a literature search beyond the first papers found and reduces repeated or irrelevant results.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: when-to-use in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to find earlier research cited by a paper, later work that cites it, and a more relevant reading list.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills/traversing-citations
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.

Any agent
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills --skill traversing-citations
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

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 Traversing Citation Networks

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills/traversing-citations/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills/traversing-citations)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills/traversing-citations"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills/traversing-citations/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 Traversing Citation Networks

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills/traversing-citations"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills/traversing-citations.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,486 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 3 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 50
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 68
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 116
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
How audits are shown
Origin unknown 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 $0.00022 $0.02486
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.01243
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00497
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00249

Measured 13d ago against content hash af46fcc402cd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Traversing Citation Networks scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 13d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl "https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/DOI:10.1234/example.2023?fields=paperId,title,year"
skills/05-kthorn-research-superpower/research/traversing-citations/SKILL.md · 303 lines

The source is not reproduced here

A licence we could not identify

The repository carries a LICENSE file, but it is custom or dual enough that GitHub cannot name it and neither can this catalogue. Unknown terms are not permission, so the body is not copied here. Read the licence at the source and decide for yourself.

Read it on GitHub

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. 13d ago First seen · 303 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A af46fcc402cd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Traversing Citation Networks is a skill published in the GitHub repository brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills (3,759 stars, last pushed 5d ago), with no licence file. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 2,486 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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