lit-review

<Use_When>

• •User says "literature review", "related work", "survey of", "research landscape"
• •User asks "what's known about X?", "compare papers on Y", "what are the approaches to Z?"
• •User needs a related work section for a paper or proposal
• •User wants to identify research gaps in a topic area
• •User wants to compare methodologies across multiple papers
• •User says "what has been done on <topic> since <year>?" </Use_When>

<Do_Not_Use_When>

• •Reading a single specific paper -- use paper-review instead
• •Quick citation lookup ("who wrote X?") -- use research-assistant agent directly
• •Statistical analysis of data -- use research-analysis instead
• •General web research not about academic papers -- use research skill instead
• •Tracking experiment results -- use experiment-log instead </Do_Not_Use_When>

<Why_This_Exists> Individual paper reviews miss the forest for the trees. Researchers need to understand how papers relate to each other -- which methods build on which, where findings agree or conflict, and what has NOT been studied. Manual literature reviews take days and are biased by reading order and recency. This skill systematically covers the landscape, identifies gaps, and produces structured synthesis that would take a human researcher significantly longer. </Why_This_Exists>

<Execution_Policy>

• •Always define scope boundaries before starting (topic, time range, methodology focus)
• •Search existing memory first to avoid re-reading papers already in the knowledge graph
• •Read new papers in parallel (up to 5 concurrent paper-reader agents)
• •Use opus-tier agent for cross-paper synthesis (requires complex reasoning)
• •Build citation graph incrementally as papers are processed
• •Output must include gap analysis -- what is NOT covered is as important as what is
• •Default model routing: paper-reader at sonnet (parallel), literature-reviewer at opus (synthesis) </Execution_Policy>

1. •

   Gather Existing Knowledge: Search memory for papers already reviewed

   code

   sc_memory_search(query="<topic keywords>", category="paper")
   sc_memory_graph_query(query="papers about <topic>")
   

   • •Collect all previously extracted papers on the topic
   • •Note which sub-areas are already covered vs gaps in coverage
2. •

   Discover New Papers: Search for papers not yet in the knowledge base

   code

   WebSearch(query="<topic> research paper <year range>")
   WebSearch(query="<topic> survey <year>")
   WebSearch(query="<specific methodology> <topic> arxiv")
   

   • •Prioritize: surveys/reviews first, then seminal papers, then recent work
   • •Target 10-30 papers depending on scope breadth
   • •Filter by venue quality and citation count when possible
3. •

   Read Papers in Parallel: Extract structured info from new papers

   • •Fire up to 5 paper-reader agents simultaneously
   • •Each extracts: [PAPER], [METHOD], [FINDING], [LIMITATION], [CONTRIBUTION]
   • •Store each in knowledge graph via paper-review workflow
   code

   # Parallel extraction
   Agent 1: paper-reader(sonnet) -> paper A
   Agent 2: paper-reader(sonnet) -> paper B
   Agent 3: paper-reader(sonnet) -> paper C
   Agent 4: paper-reader(sonnet) -> paper D
   Agent 5: paper-reader(sonnet) -> paper E
   

4. •

   Cross-Paper Synthesis: Analyze across all papers (opus tier)

   • •Methodology comparison: Which approaches are used? How do they differ?
   • •Findings synthesis: Where do results agree? Where do they conflict?
   • •Trend analysis: How has the field evolved over time?
   • •Strength assessment: Which methods have strongest evidence?
   code

   literature-reviewer(opus) analyzes all extracted papers together
   

5. •

   Gap Analysis: Identify what is NOT covered

   • •Missing methodologies: What approaches have NOT been tried?
   • •Missing datasets: What data domains are underrepresented?
   • •Missing evaluations: What metrics are not measured?
   • •Conflicting results: Where do papers disagree and why?
   • •Open questions: What do authors consistently list as future work?
6. •

   Build Citation Graph: Create relationship map in knowledge store

   code

   sc_memory_add_relation(from="paper_A", to="paper_B", type="cites")
   sc_memory_add_relation(from="paper_C", to="paper_A", type="extends")
   sc_memory_add_relation(from="paper_D", to="paper_B", type="contradicts")
   

   • •Track: cites, builds_on, extends, contradicts, replicates, same_topic
7. •

   Generate Output: Produce structured literature review

   • •Executive summary (1 paragraph)
   • •Methodology comparison table
   • •Findings synthesis with evidence quality ratings
   • •Gap analysis with research opportunities
   • •Citation graph summary
   • •Optional: Publication-ready related work section </Steps>

<Tool_Usage>

• •sc_memory_search -- Find existing papers on the topic in memory
• •sc_memory_graph_query -- Explore citation relationships and paper clusters
• •sc_memory_add_entity -- Create paper and topic entities
• •sc_memory_add_relation -- Build citation graph with typed relationships
• •sc_memory_store -- Store the literature review itself as a knowledge entry
• •WebSearch -- Discover papers not yet in the knowledge base
• •WebFetch -- Access paper abstracts and open-access content
• •Read -- Load local PDFs and previously saved paper extractions
• •Grep -- Search across stored paper extractions for specific claims or methods
• •Glob -- Find paper extraction files in the data directory </Tool_Usage>

<Escalation_And_Stop_Conditions>

• •If scope is too broad (would require 50+ papers), ask user to narrow the topic or time range
• •If fewer than 3 papers are found on the topic, report that the area may be too niche and suggest broadening scope
• •If paper access is restricted (paywalls), note which papers could not be fully analyzed and how this limits the review
• •If conflicting findings cannot be resolved, document the conflict explicitly with evidence from both sides
• •If the review exceeds reasonable length (>5000 words), offer to split into sub-topic sections
• •After 3 failed attempts to access a specific paper source, skip it and note in limitations </Escalation_And_Stop_Conditions>

<Final_Checklist>

• • Scope clearly defined with topic, time range, and boundaries
• • Existing knowledge in memory leveraged (no redundant re-reading)
• • Sufficient papers covered (minimum 5 for meaningful synthesis)
• • Methodology comparison table generated
• • Findings synthesized with agreement/conflict analysis
• • Gap analysis identifies what is NOT covered
• • Citation graph built in knowledge store
• • Research opportunities derived from gaps
• • Output formatted as structured literature review
• • Review itself stored in memory for future reference </Final_Checklist>

The citation graph stored in the knowledge graph can be queried for:

• •Clusters: Groups of papers that cite each other heavily (research communities)
• •Bridges: Papers that connect different research communities
• •Seminal papers: Nodes with high in-degree (many papers cite them)
• •Recent frontiers: Recent papers with low in-degree (newest work)

Query examples:

sc_memory_graph_query(query="papers cited by more than 3 papers in <topic>")
sc_memory_graph_query(query="papers that contradict each other on <claim>")

BibTeX Export

Generate BibTeX entries from reviewed papers:

@article{smith2024attention,
  title={Efficient Attention Mechanisms for Long Documents},
  author={Smith, J. and Jones, M.},
  journal={NeurIPS},
  year={2024}
}

Export to ~/superclaw/data/reviews/<review-id>.bib

Related Work Section Generation

For paper writing, generate a publication-ready related work section:

• •Organized by methodology category, not chronologically
• •Each paragraph covers one approach family with key papers
• •Transitions explain how approaches relate to each other
• •Final paragraph positions the user's work relative to existing literature

Gap-to-Experiment Pipeline

When gaps are identified, automatically suggest experiments:

1. •Gap: "No evaluation of method X on dataset Y"
2. •Suggested experiment: parameters from method X paper + dataset Y
3. •Link to experiment-log skill for tracking

Review Update Strategy

When new papers are published:

1. •Search for papers published after the last review date
2. •Extract and compare against existing review findings
3. •Update synthesis with new evidence
4. •Flag if any gaps have been filled or new gaps emerged

Troubleshooting

Too many papers found?

• •Narrow by venue quality (top-tier conferences/journals)
• •Narrow by citation count threshold
• •Focus on surveys first, then follow their references selectively

Conflicting synthesis?

• •Check if papers use different evaluation metrics
• •Check if papers use different datasets
• •Check if methodology descriptions use different terminology for similar approaches

Citation graph disconnected?

• •Some papers may be from different research communities
• •Add same_topic relations even without direct citations
• •Check if terminology differences hide connections