Structured Literature Review

VerifiedCaution

Conducts a structured literature search and synthesis with citation extraction and gap identification.

Sby Skills Guide Bot
DocumentationIntermediate
7/24/2026
Claude Code
#literature-review#citations#bibtex#research-synthesis#gap-analysis

Recommended for

Automated summary

Runs a structured literature search on a given topic or paper and produces a thematically organized synthesis with BibTeX citations and an identification of research gaps.

Strengths

  • Sorts findings into four explicit buckets: theoretical contributions, empirical findings, methodological innovations, and open debates
  • Emits BibTeX entries that can be dropped straight into a LaTeX project
  • Explicitly forbids fabricating citations and asks the model to flag anything it cannot verify
  • Writes the report to a dated, topic-named path, which keeps reviews easy to archive and compare

Limitations

  • Heavily reliant on WebSearch and WebFetch; without them it can only work from papers already inside the project
  • Assumes a specific project layout (master_supporting_docs/supporting_papers/, quality_reports/) that most repositories will not have
  • BibTeX metadata still needs manual checking, since the skill has no access to structured bibliographic databases
When to use it

Use it to quickly map a research area, inventory existing work, and surface gaps before drafting an introduction or framing a research question.

When not to use it

Avoid it when you need a reproducible systematic review with documented search strings and inclusion/exclusion criteria, or when no sources are reachable online or locally.

Security analysis

Caution
Quality score88/100

The skill has no destructive commands, secret exfiltration, obfuscation, or safety-disabling instructions, and its tools are used for legitimate literature search and report writing. However, network access via WebSearch/WebFetch plus file writes warrants caution, especially because external web content is untrusted and path sanitization is unspecified.

Findings
  • •Uses WebSearch/WebFetch to retrieve external content; fetched pages could contain prompt injection or unreliable citation data, and the skill does not explicitly instruct the agent to treat web content as untrusted.
  • •Writes output to quality_reports/lit_review_[sanitized_topic].md, but the sanitization method for the user-supplied topic is not defined.
How this analysis is made

Examples

Topic scan
/lit-review minimum wage and firm entry — what do we know since 2015, and where are the gaps?
Anchor on a paper
/lit-review Card and Krueger 1994 Minimum Wages and Employment — find the follow-up literature and open debates
Method-focused review
/lit-review synthetic control estimators in regional economics: methodological innovations and critiques, with BibTeX entries

name: lit-review description: Structured literature search and synthesis with citation extraction and gap identification argument-hint: "[topic, paper title, or research question]" allowed-tools: ["Read", "Grep", "Glob", "Write", "WebSearch", "WebFetch"]

Literature Review

Conduct a structured literature search and synthesis on the given topic.

Input: $ARGUMENTS — a topic, paper title, research question, or phenomenon to investigate.


Steps

  1. Parse the topic from $ARGUMENTS. If a specific paper is named, use it as the anchor.

  2. Search for related work using available tools:

    • Check master_supporting_docs/supporting_papers/ for uploaded papers
    • Use WebSearch to find recent publications (if available)
    • Use WebFetch to access working paper repositories (if available)
    • Read any existing .bib file for papers already in the project
  3. Organize findings into these categories:

    • Theoretical contributions — models, frameworks, mechanisms
    • Empirical findings — key results, effect sizes, data sources
    • Methodological innovations — new estimators, identification strategies, inference methods
    • Open debates — unresolved disagreements in the literature
  4. Identify gaps and opportunities:

    • What questions remain unanswered?
    • What data or methods could address them?
    • Where do findings conflict?
  5. Extract citations in BibTeX format for all papers discussed.

  6. Save the report to quality_reports/lit_review_[sanitized_topic].md


Output Format

# Literature Review: [Topic]

**Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD]
**Query:** [Original query from user]

## Summary

[2-3 paragraph overview of the state of the literature]

## Key Papers

### [Author (Year)] — [Short Title]
- **Main contribution:** [1-2 sentences]
- **Method:** [Identification strategy / data]
- **Key finding:** [Result with effect size if available]
- **Relevance:** [Why it matters for our research]

[Repeat for 5-15 papers, ordered by relevance]

## Thematic Organization

### Theoretical Contributions
[Grouped discussion]

### Empirical Findings
[Grouped discussion with comparison across studies]

### Methodological Innovations
[Methods relevant to the topic]

## Gaps and Opportunities

1. [Gap 1 — what's missing and why it matters]
2. [Gap 2]
3. [Gap 3]

## Suggested Next Steps

- [Concrete actions: papers to read, data to obtain, methods to consider]

## BibTeX Entries

```bibtex
@article{...}

---

## Important

- **Be honest about uncertainty.** If you cannot verify a citation, say so.
- **Prioritize recent work** (last 5-10 years) unless seminal papers are older.
- **Note working papers vs published papers** — working papers may change.
- **Do NOT fabricate citations.** If you're unsure about a paper's details, flag it for the user to verify.

From the file to a first result

The download contains exactly the content displayed on this page. This copy may differ from the latest version in the source repository.

View the source and supporting files

This download contains SKILL.md only. Any scripts, references, templates and dependencies are not included. Get the required files from the source, preserving their directory structure, before continuing.

1. Download the file

Download SKILL.md

From the root of a test project, save the file as .skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/SKILL.md, or use the command below. This folder is for inspecting the skill before installation.

Command for macOS/Linux or WSL: requires a POSIX shell and curl. On Windows without WSL, use the download button and create the folder manually.

mkdir -p '.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83' && curl --fail --show-error --location 'https://skills-guides.com/api/skills/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/download' --output '.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/SKILL.md.part' && mv '.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/SKILL.md.part' '.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/SKILL.md'

2. Check prerequisites

Read SKILL.md before using it. If it references scripts or external services, inspect them and prepare the required access in your test environment.

No recognized prerequisites section in this file. This does not mean it is self-contained: libraries, tools and access requirements may be mentioned elsewhere in the content or source repository.

The platforms on this page are catalog indications. The paths below follow tool documentation; they do not prove this skill has been run in those tools. No minimum tool version is confirmed for this listing.

3. Load the skill

After inspection, copy the complete folder into your project using one of the commands below, then open a new tool session. The command stops if a folder with the same name already exists: compare the files before replacing it.

Claude Code
test -f '.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/SKILL.md' && test -s '.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/SKILL.md' && mkdir -p '.claude/skills' && test ! -e '.claude/skills/lit-review' && cp -R '.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83' '.claude/skills/lit-review'

OpenSkills

OpenSkills must already be installed. The local install/read procedure is checked with OpenSkills 1.5.0, which requires Node.js ≥ 20.6.0. Catalog slugs are not resolved automatically.

Official OpenSkills installation
openskills install './.skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83'

openskills read 'structured-literature-review-mryiqg83'

Reading should display the installed file content and its base directory. It does not run the skill or install its dependencies.

For an agent that reads AGENTS.md, then sync the index. This command changes AGENTS.md: review the diff before using it.

openskills sync

Manual method or another tool: attach SKILL.md to a conversation, or open it in an agent that can read files. Include any required supporting resources. No universal folder is recognized by every tool.

4. Try a first task

Use a short, synthetic input: an API endpoint, a small document or an interface brief. In a new conversation, attach the file or give the agent its path, then adapt this request:

Read .skill-downloads/structured-literature-review-mryiqg83/SKILL.md and apply its instructions to this example: [describe a test input]. Identify any missing files, dependencies or access. Produce the result requested by the skill without inventing data or running unreviewed scripts.

Expected result: output matching the skill instructions, or a precise list of missing prerequisites. A read confirmation alone does not validate a first use. If an external resource is unavailable, that path remains untested.

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