literature-review

literature-review is a skill for Claude Code from TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine. It costs 86 tokens per session (5,536 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of literature-review, MIT.

A research workflow for systematic reviews: structured searches and summaries of published studies across sources such as PubMed, arXiv, and bioRxiv. bioRxiv is a free online archive where scientists share biology research before formal journal review.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for literature reviews, research synthesis, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, and review sections of papers or theses. It also requires adding one or two AI-generated scientific figures.
Why use it?
It helps gather evidence across several academic databases, compare findings, identify gaps, and check that citations are accurate.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Needs its repository: it runs a file that does not travel with it, so clone the repository first. The line is python scripts/generate_schematic.py "your diagram description" -o figures/output.png.

Part of the open-academic-paper-machine plugin — 33 skills, 21 commands, 4 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it for literature reviews, research synthesis, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, and review sections of papers or theses. It also requires adding one or two AI-generated scientific figures.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine
agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/literature-review

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install open-academic-paper-machine, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 33 skills, 21 commands, 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 literature-review

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/literature-review/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/literature-review)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/literature-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/literature-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 literature-review

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/literature-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tobiasblask/open-paper-machine/literature-review.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 86 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,536 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 86% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00086 $0.05536
Opus 5 $0.00043 $0.02768
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.01107
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00554

Measured 12d ago against content hash 37d7b6d217c0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

literature-review 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/generate_pdf.py, scripts/search_databases.py, scripts/verify_citations.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

86% identical to literature-review — 102 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

scientific-skills/literature-review/SKILL.md · 638 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 638 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Literature Review

Overview

Conduct systematic, comprehensive literature reviews following rigorous academic methodology. Search multiple literature databases, synthesize findings thematically, verify all citations for accuracy, and generate professional output documents in markdown and PDF formats.

This skill integrates with multiple scientific skills for database access (gget, bioservices, datacommons-client) and provides specialized tools for citation verification, result aggregation, and document generation.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

  • Conducting a systematic literature review for research or publication
  • Synthesizing current knowledge on a specific topic across multiple sources
  • Performing meta-analysis or scoping reviews
  • Writing the literature review section of a research paper or thesis
  • Investigating the state of the art in a research domain
  • Identifying research gaps and future directions
  • Requiring verified citations and professional formatting

Visual Enhancement with Scientific Schematics

⚠️ MANDATORY: Every literature review MUST include at least 1-2 AI-generated figures using the scientific-schematics skill.

This is not optional. Literature reviews without visual elements are incomplete. Before finalizing any document:

  1. Generate at minimum ONE schematic or diagram (e.g., PRISMA flow diagram for systematic reviews)
  2. Prefer 2-3 figures for comprehensive reviews (search strategy flowchart, thematic synthesis diagram, conceptual framework)

How to generate figures:

  • Use the scientific-schematics skill to generate AI-powered publication-quality diagrams
  • Simply describe your desired diagram in natural language
  • Nano Banana Pro will automatically generate, review, and refine the schematic

How to generate schematics:

python scripts/generate_schematic.py "your diagram description" -o figures/output.png

The AI will automatically:

  • Create publication-quality images with proper formatting
  • Review and refine through multiple iterations
  • Ensure accessibility (colorblind-friendly, high contrast)
  • Save outputs in the figures/ directory

Read the full file on GitHub · 638 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files 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. 12d ago First seen · 638 lines · 86 tokens per session scan A 37d7b6d217c0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

literature-review is a skill published in the GitHub repository TobiasBlask/open-paper-machine (18 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 86 tokens to every session and 5,536 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 86% identical to literature-review, differing in 102 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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