literature-review

Literature Review

Conduct deep literature reviews through multi-perspective dialogue and systematic search.

Input

• $0 — Research topic or question
• $1 — Optional: specific focus or angle

References

• Multi-perspective dialogue prompts (STORM): ~/.claude/skills/literature-review/references/dialogue-prompts.md
• Literature review workflow (AgentLaboratory): ~/.claude/skills/literature-review/references/review-workflow.md

Scripts (from literature-search skill)

# Search Semantic Scholar
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_semantic_scholar.py --query "topic" --max-results 20
 
# Search OpenAlex
python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/search_openalex.py --query

Workflow

Step 1: Generate Expert Personas (from STORM)

Given the topic, create 3-5 diverse expert personas:

• Each represents a different perspective, role, or research angle
• Example: "ML systems researcher focused on efficiency", "Theoretical statistician concerned with guarantees"
• Use the persona generation prompts from references

Step 2: Multi-Perspective Dialogue

For each persona, simulate a multi-turn Q&A conversation:

1. Persona asks a question from their unique angle
2. Generate search queries from the question
3. Search literature using the search scripts
4. Synthesize an answer grounded in retrieved papers with inline citations
5. Record the dialogue turn with search results
6. Repeat for 3-5 turns per persona
7. End when persona says "Thank you so much for your help!"

Step 3: Synthesize Knowledge

• Combine all persona conversations into a unified knowledge base
• Remove redundancy across personas
• Organize by theme/subtopic
• Generate an outline based on the collected information

Step 4: Generate Literature Review

• Write a structured review organized by the generated outline
• Every claim must be supported by a citation
• Include a summary table of key papers (method, contribution, limitations)

Output

A structured literature review with:

1. Outline — Hierarchical topic structure
2. Per-section summaries — Each grounded in retrieved papers
3. Paper database — Structured entries for all reviewed papers
4. Knowledge gaps — Identified areas needing further investigation

Rules

• Every sentence in the review must be supported by gathered information
• If information is not found, explicitly state the gap
• Cite broadly — cover diverse approaches, not just the most popular
• Include recent papers (last 2-3 years) alongside foundational work
• Use inline citations: "Smith et al. [1] propose..."

Related Skills

• Upstream: literature-search, deep-research
• Downstream: related-work-writing, research-planning
• See also: survey-generation