lit-review

lit-review is a skill for Claude Code from dgilford/ai-science-toolkit. It costs 49 tokens per session (1,137 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A research workflow for finding and combining scientific papers from Zotero, arXiv, bioRxiv, Google Scholar, and Consensus. ArXiv and bioRxiv are online archives where researchers share papers, including work that may not yet have passed peer review.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to frame a question, investigate methods, interpret results, map a research area, or produce a literature synthesis.
Why use it?
It helps turn a broad research question into a structured view of established findings, disagreements, new work, and gaps in the field.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths.

Part of the ai-science-toolkit plugin — 21 skills, 4 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to frame a question, investigate methods, interpret results, map a research area, or produce a literature synthesis.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit/lit-review
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 dgilford/ai-science-toolkit --skill lit-review
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install ai-science-toolkit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 21 skills, 4 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 lit-review

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit/lit-review/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit/lit-review)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit/lit-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit/lit-review/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 lit-review

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit/lit-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dgilford/ai-science-toolkit/lit-review.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,137 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 2 findings. 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: 7 findings, up to high

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 →

  • high Agent Snooping · line 7
    Skill reads from agent configuration directories (.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/). These directories may contain API keys, personal settings, and other credentials that the skill has no legitimate need to access.
    Fix: Remove all code or instructions that access agent configuration directories (.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/). If configuration values are needed, pass them explicitly as parameters or environment variabl
  • high Agent Snooping · line 46
    Skill reads from agent configuration directories (.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/). These directories may contain API keys, personal settings, and other credentials that the skill has no legitimate need to access.
    Fix: Remove all code or instructions that access agent configuration directories (.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/). If configuration values are needed, pass them explicitly as parameters or environment variabl
  • high Supply Chain · line 55
    Remote code is downloaded and executed. This bypasses code review and could introduce malicious code.
    Fix: Avoid downloading and executing remote scripts. Use trusted packages from PyPI/npm. If remote fetch is required, verify checksums and use HTTPS.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 4
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 55
    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 77
    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 77
    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 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 $0.00049 $0.01137
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00568
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00227
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00114

Measured 11d ago against content hash 480861a27e5e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

lit-review scanned grade B with 2 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 11d 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.

Reads agent configuration directoriesmediumAgent snooping

.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/ hold keys, settings and other credentials a mod has no legitimate need for.

summary: 'Search and synthesize scientific literature from Zotero, arxiv, bioRxiv, Google Scholar, and Consensus. Zotero write support needs `ZOTERO_*` env vars in `~/.claude/settings.json`.'

Makes network callslowCapability

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

curl -s "https://api.zotero.org/users/$ZOTERO_USER_ID/collections?limit=100" \
skills/lit-review/SKILL.md · 84 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 84 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Conduct a literature search and deliver a structured scientific briefing. See REFERENCE.md for mode-specific guidance.

On invocation, ask the user

  1. Topic — what are we searching for?
  2. Modeframe / methods / interpret / landscape / synthesize
  3. Starting point (optional) — any known papers, authors, or search terms to seed from?

Search order

  1. Zotero — existing library first; note what's already there
  2. Consensus — synthesized search for landscape and key claims
  3. Google Scholar — seminal works, citation counts, author networks
  4. arxiv / bioRxiv — recent and unpublished work

Stop adding sources once coverage is sufficient for the mode.

Output structure

1. High-level summary — 1–2 paragraphs: what the field looks like, what is settled, what is contested. Tag findings as established / debated / emerging throughout.

2. Topical review — key ideas, findings, and debates organized by theme. Apply mode-specific guidance from REFERENCE.md. Distinguish what is well-established, actively debated, and absent.

3. Papers — for each paper:

  • Full citation (authors, year, title, journal/venue)
  • Peer-reviewed or preprint — flag explicitly
  • Key contribution in 1–2 sentences
  • Relevance to the current topic and mode

4. Offers — always prompt:

  • Save to REFERENCES.md? — check if it exists and show existing entries first. Append using the template in REFERENCE.md. Never overwrite.
  • Add to Zotero? — list papers not already in the library, then ask. If yes, execute the steps below.

Adding papers to Zotero

Required env vars (set in ~/.claude/settings.jsonenv block):

  • ZOTERO_USER_ID — your numeric Zotero user ID (find it at zotero.org/settings/keys)
  • ZOTERO_API_KEY — a Zotero API key with write access (same page)
  • ZOTERO_INBOX_COLLECTION — name of the collection to file new papers into (e.g. Inbox)

If any required var is unset, skip the Zotero write step and tell the user what to configure.

Read the full file on GitHub · 84 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 11d ago First seen · 84 lines · 49 tokens per session scan B 480861a27e5e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

lit-review is a skill published in the GitHub repository dgilford/ai-science-toolkit (62 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 1,137 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 2 findings (reads agent configuration directories, 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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