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lit-review

Structured literature search and synthesis with citation extraction and gap identification.

Published by brycewang-stanford ↗brycewang-stanford/Auto-Empirical-Research-Skills

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lit-review

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Use lit-review to produce a structured literature review for [research question], synthesizing theoretical, empirical, and methodological findings; identify gaps, note empirical identification strategies, distinguish working from published papers, and include verified BibTeX citations.

Required inputs

  • [research question]

User-approved starter prompt based on a pinned source version; check current skill requirements before running. Task evidence ↗

SKILL.md

name: lit-reviewdescription: Structured literature search and synthesis with citation extraction and gap identification.disable-model-invocation: trueargument-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.

Steps

  1. Check existing materials:

    • Read master_supporting_docs/supporting_papers/ for uploaded papers
    • Read existing .bib files for already-cited works
    • Check CLAUDE.md and MEMORY.md for project context

  2. Search for literature:

    • Use WebSearch for recent publications (last 5-10 years prioritized)
    • Use WebFetch for accessible papers and abstracts
    • Search for working papers on NBER, SSRN, RePEc

  3. Organize findings into:

    • Theoretical contributions: Key models and frameworks
    • Empirical findings: Main results and methods used
    • Methodological innovations: New techniques relevant to the topic
    • Open debates: Unresolved questions and conflicting evidence

  4. Identify gaps and opportunities: What questions remain unanswered? Where could new work contribute?

  5. Extract citations in BibTeX format for relevant papers.

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

Important

  • Distinguish working papers from published papers.
  • Explicitly flag any citation you cannot verify rather than fabricating details.
  • Prioritize papers from top journals in the field.
  • Note the identification strategy used in each empirical paper.