Getting it into your agent
This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.
/plugin marketplace add xwmxcz/papers-skill/plugin install papers-skillWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/xwmxcz/papers-skill/papers-research)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xwmxcz/papers-skill/papers-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xwmxcz/papers-skill/papers-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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xwmxcz/papers-skill/papers-research"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xwmxcz/papers-skill/papers-research.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00045 | $0.01218 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00023 | $0.00609 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00009 | $0.00244 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00122 |
Grade A, and why
papers-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 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Papers Research
Skill-mode port of papers-mcp.
Orchestrates a bundled Python CLI (scripts/papers.py) via Bash to search
papers, fetch metadata/citations, and download + read PDFs.
One-time setup
Verify dependencies (only once per machine):
python -c "import httpx, arxiv, fitz" 2>&1 || pip install httpx arxiv PyMuPDF
If python isn't on PATH, use py (Windows) or the full interpreter path.
Invocation
The script lives at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-research/scripts/papers.py
— this variable is auto-substituted by Claude Code's plugin loader. Always
quote the path (it may contain spaces).
python "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/papers-research/scripts/papers.py" <subcommand> [args]
Subcommands
| Subcommand | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
search <query> [--limit N] |
Semantic Scholar search (cap 20) | search "diffusion models" --limit 5 |
detail <paper_id> |
Full metadata, TL;DR, top 10 references | detail 10.48550/arXiv.2310.06825 |
citations <paper_id> [--limit N] |
Papers that cite this one (cap 20) | citations <id> --limit 15 |
arxiv <query> [--max-results N] |
arXiv preprint search (cap 10) | arxiv "RLHF" --max-results 5 |
download <arxiv_id> [--save-dir D] |
Save PDF locally | download 2310.06825 --save-dir ./pdfs |
read <pdf_path> [--max-pages N] |
Extract PDF text via PyMuPDF | read ./pdfs/foo.pdf --max-pages 20 |
Paper ID conventions
detail and citations auto-detect ID type:
- DOI (
10.xxxx/...) → used as-is - arXiv (
ARXIV:2310.06825, or bare numeric ≥10 digits → auto-prefixed) - Semantic Scholar paperId (long hex string) → used as-is
download requires a plain arXiv ID like 2310.06825 (no prefix).
Standard workflows
A — Literature scan
- Run
search <topic>. - Present results as a ranked table: # | Title | Year | Citations | ID.
- Ask which paper(s) to dig into.
B — Deep-read one paper
detail <id>→ confirm match, show abstract + TL;DR.- If arXiv ID present:
download <arxiv_id> --save-dir ./pdfs. read <pdf_path>(default 10 pages = abstract + intro + conclusion; raise to 30+ for full read but warn about context usage).- Summarize: problem · method · key result · limitations.
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.
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.
- 8d ago First seen · 112 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A bdd14f7ab739
papers-research is a skill published in the GitHub repository xwmxcz/papers-skill (1 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 1,218 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.
Other skills, from other repositories
latex-engine
Activate when the user wants to export a completed paper draft to production-ready LaTeX (.tex) and PDF. Converts draft.md + references.bib + figures/ into a complete arxiv-style LaTeX project with properly resolved \citep/\citet citations, booktabs tables, figure environments, and compiled PDF output.
venue-templates
Access comprehensive LaTeX templates, formatting requirements, and submission guidelines for major scientific publication venues (Nature, Science, PLOS, IEEE, ACM), academic conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, CHI), research posters, and grant proposals (NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA). This skill should be used when preparing…
skill-doc-delivery
Convert markdown to DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PDF office documents — use when you need exportable deliverables.
add-pdf-report
Internal implementation skill invoked by /add-native for app-generated PDF report workflows using expo-print and, when present, expo-sharing.
add-pdf-viewer
Internal implementation skill invoked by /add-native for native PDF control workflows. Handles HTTPS and file URI PDF viewing with @microsoft/power-apps-native-pdf-viewer 0.2.9+.
extract-resume
Parse a resume's uploaded PDF into structured JSON (basics, experience, projects, skills, education) and save it to the editor.