What is literature-search?

A tool for searching scientific papers across PubMed, arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv using ordinary-language questions. PubMed indexes biomedical research, while arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv host research papers and preprints, including work not yet peer reviewed.

Use it to find papers, retrieve article text, and locate figures for scientific research on a topic.

It brings results from several research sources into one search instead of requiring separate searches and manually combining the results.

literature-search — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by Zaoqu-Liu

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 Zaoqu-Liu/ScienceClaw --skill literature-search

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Zaoqu-Liu/ScienceClaw

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zaoqu-liu/scienceclaw/literature-search/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/zaoqu-liu/scienceclaw/literature-search)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zaoqu-liu/scienceclaw/literature-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zaoqu-liu/scienceclaw/literature-search/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zaoqu-liu/scienceclaw/literature-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zaoqu-liu/scienceclaw/literature-search.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,378 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin 100% 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00035	$0.01378
Opus 5	$0.00017	$0.00689
Sonnet 5	$0.00007	$0.00276
Haiku 4.5	$0.00003	$0.00138

Measured 7d ago against content hash 7c22c702a3c8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

literature-search scanned grade B with 1 finding 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 7d 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.

LITERATURE_SCRIPT=$(find ~/.claude/plugins/cache -name "search" -path "*/literature-search/*/scripts/*" -type f 2>/dev/null | head -1)

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to literature-search — 0 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.

skills/literature-search/SKILL.md · 215 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 215 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Literature Search

Search across all major scientific literature databases (PubMed, arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv) simultaneously using natural language queries powered by Valyu's semantic search API.

Why This Skill is Powerful

No API Parameter Parsing: Just pass natural language queries directly - no need to construct complex search parameters
Semantic Search: Understands the meaning of your query, not just keyword matching
Full-Text Access: Returns complete article content, not just abstracts
Image Links: Includes figures and images from papers
Comprehensive Coverage: Search across PubMed, arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv simultaneously
Unified Results: Get results from all sources in a single query

Requirements

Node.js 18+ (uses built-in fetch)
Valyu API key from https://platform.valyu.ai ($10 free credits)

CRITICAL: Script Path Resolution

The scripts/search commands in this documentation are relative to this skill's installation directory.

Before running any command, locate the script using:

LITERATURE_SCRIPT=$(find ~/.claude/plugins/cache -name "search" -path "*/literature-search/*/scripts/*" -type f 2>/dev/null | head -1)

Then use the full path for all commands:

$LITERATURE_SCRIPT "CRISPR gene editing advances" 15

API Key Setup Flow

When you run a search and receive "setup_required": true, follow this flow:

Ask the user for their API key: "To search scientific literature, I need your Valyu API key. Get one free ($10 credits) at https://platform.valyu.ai"
Once the user provides the key, run:
```
scripts/search setup <api-key>
```
Retry the original search.

When to Use This Skill

Comprehensive literature reviews across all domains
Finding all relevant research on a topic
Cross-domain scientific discovery
Combining biomedical, physics, and preprint literature
Emerging research across disciplines

Output Format

{
  "success": true,
  "type": "literature_search",
  "query": "CRISPR gene editing advances",
  "result_count": 15,
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Article Title",
      "url": "https://...",
      "content": "Full article text with figures...",
      "source": "pubmed|arxiv|biorxiv|medrxiv",
      "relevance_score": 0.95,
      "images": ["https://example.com/figure1.jpg"]
    }
  ],
  "cost": 0.025
}

Read the full file on GitHub · 215 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.

7d ago First seen · 215 lines · 35 tokens per session scan B 7c22c702a3c8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

literature-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository Zaoqu-Liu/ScienceClaw (60 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 1,378 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (reads agent configuration directories). It is 100% identical to literature-search, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Research Scientific comprehensive-search literature-search multi-source-search research-aggregation scientific-literature semantic-search

literature-search

Getting it into your agent

Wrote this? Show the measurements

What it costs to keep this loaded

Grade B, and why

Reads agent configuration directoriesmediumAgent snooping

This is a copy

How it starts

Literature Search

Why This Skill is Powerful

Requirements

CRITICAL: Script Path Resolution

API Key Setup Flow

When to Use This Skill

Output Format

What this file has done since we first saw it

Other skills, from other repositories

literature-search

literature-search

literature-search

literature-search

drug-discovery-search

biomedical-search