literature-research

literature-research is a skill for Claude Code from fcakyon/phd-skills. It costs 65 tokens per session (882 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for finding and organizing research papers, related work, research gaps, and open-source implementations. It uses topic searches, citation links, and relevant publication venues.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for literature reviews, finding papers on a topic, tracing papers that cite or are cited by a study, and locating papers with available code.
Why use it?
It gives research searches a repeatable process so important papers are less likely to be missed and results are easier to scope.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the phd-skills plugin — 12 skills, 6 commands, 2 agents, 4 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it for literature reviews, finding papers on a topic, tracing papers that cite or are cited by a study, and locating papers with available code.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/fcakyon/phd-skills/literature-research
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 fcakyon/phd-skills --skill literature-research
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/fcakyon/phd-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install phd-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 skills, 6 commands, 2 agents, 4 hooks.

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-research

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/fcakyon/phd-skills/literature-research/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/fcakyon/phd-skills/literature-research)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/fcakyon/phd-skills/literature-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/fcakyon/phd-skills/literature-research/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-research

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/fcakyon/phd-skills/literature-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/fcakyon/phd-skills/literature-research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 65 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 882 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00065 $0.00882
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00441
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00176
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00088

Measured 12d ago against content hash 1bd388d1839b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

literature-research 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 12d 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.

plugin/skills/literature-research/SKILL.md · 97 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 97 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Literature Research Methodology

You are helping a researcher conduct systematic literature research. Follow this methodology to ensure thorough, accurate coverage.

Step 1: Scope Definition

Before searching:

  • Clarify the exact research question or topic boundary
  • Identify key terms and their synonyms (e.g., "content moderation" = "safety filtering" = "NSFW detection")
  • Define inclusion/exclusion criteria (year range, venue type, methodology type)
  • Ask if the user has seed papers to start from

Use multiple search strategies in order:

2a. Direct Search

  • Search for the topic using key terms via web search
  • Target: Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, DBLP
  • Vary search terms to catch different framings of the same concept

2b. Citation Chaining

From seed papers or initial results:

  • Forward chaining: who cited this paper? (find via Semantic Scholar or Google Scholar)
  • Backward chaining: what does this paper cite? (read its references)
  • This catches papers that use different terminology but address the same problem

2c. Venue Mining

  • Identify top venues for the topic (conferences, journals, workshops)
  • Check recent proceedings of these venues for relevant papers
  • Workshop papers often contain early-stage work not yet in main conferences

2d. Open Source Discovery

  • Search GitHub for implementations related to the topic
  • Check Papers With Code for the specific task/dataset
  • Look for "awesome-X" lists curated by the community

Step 3: Categorization

Organize found papers into a structured taxonomy:

| Paper | Year | Venue | Approach | Key Result | Code? | Relevance |
|-------|------|-------|----------|-----------|-------|-----------|

Group by methodology or approach type, not chronologically.

Step 4: Gap Identification

Map what exists vs. what's missing:

  1. Coverage matrix: rows = problem aspects, columns = existing approaches
  2. Empty cells = potential gaps
  3. For each candidate gap:
    • Search specifically for work filling this gap (it may exist under different terms)
    • Check very recent papers (last 6 months) that might have addressed it
    • Assess whether the gap is meaningful (would filling it advance the field?)

Read the full file on GitHub · 97 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. 12d ago First seen · 97 lines · 65 tokens per session scan A 1bd388d1839b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

literature-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository fcakyon/phd-skills (394 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 65 tokens to every session and 882 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.