research-alerts

Research Alerts

Monitor research topics and notify the user when new relevant papers appear on PubMed or bioRxiv.

When to Use

• User says "/watch TOPIC" or "监控 X 的最新文献"
• User says "有新文献告诉我" or "关注这个课题"
• User says "/watches" to list active watches
• User says "/unwatch TOPIC" to stop monitoring

How It Works

Watch Storage

Watches are stored as individual JSON files in ~/.scienceclaw/watches/:

{
  "topic": "THBS2 immunotherapy",
  "query": "THBS2 AND (immunotherapy OR immune checkpoint)",
  "created": "2026-03-10",
  "last_check": "2026-03-10",
  "interval_days": 7,
  "last_count": 47,
  "channel": "telegram"
}

File naming: ~/.scienceclaw/watches/<slug>.json (e.g., thbs2-immunotherapy.json)

Creating a Watch

When the user says /watch TOPIC:

1. Parse the topic into a PubMed search query (add appropriate MeSH terms or Boolean operators)
2. Run an initial search to get the baseline count
3. Save the watch configuration
4. Confirm: "已设置监控「TOPIC」，每周检查 PubMed 新文献。当前共 N 篇。"

mkdir -p ~/.scienceclaw/watches
cat > ~/.scienceclaw/watches/SLUG.json << 'EOF'
{"topic":"TOPIC","query":"PUBMED_QUERY","created":"DATE","last_check":"DATE","interval_days":7,"last_count":N,"channel":"current"}
EOF

Checking Watches at Session Start

At the start of each session (as part of Session Greeting):

1. List files in ~/.scienceclaw/watches/
2. For each watch, check if today - last_check >= interval_days
3. For due watches, run a PubMed search with mindate=last_check:

curl -s "https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi?db=pubmed&retmode=json&retmax=5&sort=pub_date&term=QUERY&mindate=LAST_CHECK&maxdate=TODAY&datetype=pdat"

1. If new results found, fetch brief summaries and report:

📩 文献监控更新 — TOPIC
  发现 N 篇新文献（自 LAST_CHECK 以来）：
  1. "Title..." (Authors, Journal, Year) PMID: xxx
  2. "Title..." (Authors, Journal, Year) PMID: xxx
  
  要详细了解哪篇？或回复 /unwatch TOPIC 停止监控。

1. Update last_check and last_count in the watch file