Skills for Real Engineers. Straight from my .agents directory.
paper-lookup
Agent skill fromzLanqing/codex-claude-academic-skills
Search 10 academic paper databases via REST APIs for research papers, preprints, and scholarly articles. Covers PubMed, PMC (full text), bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, OpenAlex, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, CORE, Unpaywall. Use when searching for papers, citations, DOI/PMID lookups, abstracts, full text, open access, preprints, citation graphs, author search, or any scholarly literature query. Triggers on mentions of any supported database or requests like "find papers on X" or "look up this DOI".
How to install paper-lookup
npx skills add zLanqing/codex-claude-academic-skills# or add only this skill to Claude Code: copy the folder
scientific-toolkit-skill/references/scientific-skills/paper-lookup/
# into
~/.claude/skills/paper-lookup/ (all projects)
.claude/skills/paper-lookup/ (one project)
1# Paper Lookup23You have access to 10 academic paper databases through their REST APIs. Your job is to figure out which database(s) best serve the user's query, call them, and return the results.45## Core Workflow671. **Understand the query** -- What is the user looking for? A specific paper by DOI? Papers on a topic? An author's publications? Open access PDFs? Full text? This determines which database(s) to hit.892. **Select database(s)** -- Use the database selection guide below. Many queries benefit from hitting multiple databases -- for example, searching PubMed for papers and then checking Unpaywall for open access copies.10113. **Read the reference file** -- Each database has a reference file in `references/` with endpoint details, query formats, and example calls. Read the relevant file(s) before making API calls.12134. **Make the API call(s)** -- See the **Making API Calls** section below for which HTTP fetch tool to use on your platform.14155. **Return results** -- Always return:16 - The **raw JSON** (or parsed XML for arXiv) response from each database17 - A **list of databases queried** with the specific endpoints used18 - If a query returned no results, say so explicitly rather than omitting it1920## Database Selection Guide2122Match the user's intent to the right database(s).2324### By Use Case2526| User is asking about... | Primary database(s) | Also consider |27|---|---|---|28| Papers on a biomedical topic | PubMed | Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex |29…
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