literature-scan

literature-scan is a skill for Claude Code from redhuntlabs/wizard. It costs 31 tokens per session (1,016 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A first-pass research workflow for learning an unfamiliar subject. It identifies the main sources, viewpoints, areas of agreement, disagreements, and unanswered questions in a one-page brief.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting research, preparing a presentation or interview, choosing sources for deeper reading, or beginning a literature review—the part of research that summarises existing work.
Why use it?
It prevents you from getting lost among too many articles before knowing which ones matter. It gives you a map for deciding what to read closely.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the wizard plugin — 37 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it when starting research, preparing a presentation or interview, choosing sources for deeper reading, or beginning a literature review—the part of research that summarises existing work.

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

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install wizard, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 37 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent, 1 hook.

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-scan

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redhuntlabs/wizard/literature-scan.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/redhuntlabs/wizard/literature-scan)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/redhuntlabs/wizard/literature-scan"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redhuntlabs/wizard/literature-scan.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 31 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,016 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 $0.00031 $0.01016
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00508
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00203
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00102

Measured 8d ago against content hash 60e555966799, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

literature-scan 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 8d 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.

spells/research/literature-scan/SKILL.md · 118 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 118 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Literature Scan

What this does

Maps an unfamiliar topic by finding the canonical 5-10 sources, identifying the major positions/camps/findings, and producing a one-page brief that you can navigate from. Avoids the "drowning in tabs" problem.

When to use

  • Starting research on a topic you don't know well
  • Preparing to write about, present on, or interview someone about a topic
  • Choosing what to read deeply (after this scan)
  • Building a literature review (this is the first stage)

What you bring (Inputs)

  • The topic, narrowed to a single sentence
  • The audience (yourself / a memo reader / a paper reviewer) — drives depth
  • Time budget (1 hour for a quick scan, half-day for a thorough one)

What you get (Output)

A one-page brief with: scope, 5-10 canonical sources (with one-line summaries), the 2-4 major positions or camps, the consensus and the disagreements, and the gaps you noticed.

How it works (Steps)

This is a workflow.

Stages

Stage 1: Define scope precisely

Write the topic in one sentence. If you can't, the scope is too broad. Examples:

  • Bad: "Climate policy"
  • Good: "Carbon border adjustment mechanisms and their impact on developing-country exporters, 2020-2025"

Stage 2: Find the canonical sources

For 60-90 minutes, hunt for the 5-10 sources everyone in this area cites. Signals:

  • Cited by multiple recent reviews
  • Authored by people who appear repeatedly
  • The seminal paper that established the field/term
  • The most recent comprehensive review

Capture: title, author, year, one-line summary, why it matters.

Stage 3: Identify the camps

Read the abstracts/introductions of all sources. Group them. Are there 2-4 distinct positions, methodologies, or findings?

Examples: "Pro vs anti," "Empirical vs theoretical," "Three different mechanisms proposed," "Two regional perspectives."

Stage 4: Note consensus and disagreement

What does almost everyone agree on? What is actively contested? Where does new evidence point?

Read the full file on GitHub · 118 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. 8d ago First seen · 118 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A 60e555966799

Subscribe to this mod's changes

literature-scan is a skill published in the GitHub repository redhuntlabs/wizard (9 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 1,016 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 2026-08-31.