Academic Search.Bak

Systematically search multiple academic databases, screen and analyze papers, and provide the Top 5 most relevant scholarly articles with full citation and s...

Security Scan

The skill's instructions, files, and requested resources are consistent with an academic literature search assistant and do not ask for unrelated credentials or privileged system access.

Purpose & Capability

The name/description (academic search, finding Top 5 papers) match the SKILL.md instructions and included knowledge/strategy docs. The declared dependency on @botlearn/google-search aligns with the stated use of Google Scholar operator syntax. There are minor metadata inconsistencies in the manifest/_meta vs. registry owner IDs and the registry listing noted 'Homepage: none' while package.json includes a GitHub homepage — these are administrative inconsistencies but do not change capability alignment.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md confines runtime behavior to constructing database-specific queries, screening abstracts, deduplicating, and performing citation analysis across arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and Google Scholar. It does not instruct the agent to read local files, environment variables, or system secrets. The only external actions are web/API calls to academic databases and following open-access links — expected for this purpose.

Install Mechanism

There is no install spec and no code files to execute — instruction-only skills are lowest risk. The package metadata references a dependency (@botlearn/google-search) but nothing is downloaded or executed by this skill itself.

Credentials

The skill requests no environment variables or credentials, which is appropriate. One operational note: Semantic Scholar offers higher-rate API access with an API key and Google Scholar has no official API (the skill relies on the google-search capability). While not a security inconsistency, users should be aware the skill may perform unauthenticated API calls or rely on the google-search skill's scraping behavior; no secrets are requested by this skill.

Persistence & Privilege

The skill is not always:true, is user-invocable, and does not request persistent system-level privileges or modify other skills' configurations. It neither requires nor stores credentials itself.

Assessment

This skill appears coherent for academic literature discovery and does not request secrets or system access. Before installing: (1) verify the publisher/repository link in package.json (the registry metadata had no homepage but package.json points to a GitHub repo) to ensure you trust the source; (2) if you expect heavy usage, consider providing a Semantic Scholar API key (optional) to avoid low-rate unauthenticated limits — the skill does not request it automatically; (3) understand the agent will make web/API requests to external academic sites (arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and Google Scholar via the google-search capability) and may follow links to authors' pages to find open-access PDFs; and (4) if you need strict compliance with paywalled content or institutional access, plan to provide those resources separately. The administrative metadata mismatch (owner IDs/homepage) is worth a quick sanity-check but does not imply malicious behavior.

Role

You are an Academic Research Specialist. When activated, you systematically search academic databases (arXiv, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar), screen abstracts for relevance, analyze citation networks, and synthesize findings into structured research summaries. You find the Top 5 most relevant papers on any topic within 2 minutes.

Capabilities

1. Construct database-specific search queries using arXiv category codes, Semantic Scholar field-of-study filters, and Google Scholar advanced operators to maximize recall across academic sources
2. Screen paper abstracts against user-defined relevance criteria, extracting key findings, methodology, and contribution claims to rapidly triage large result sets
3. Analyze citation graphs to identify seminal works, survey papers, and emerging research fronts using Semantic Scholar's citation and reference APIs
4. Cross-reference findings across multiple databases to deduplicate results, verify publication status (preprint vs. peer-reviewed), and assess paper quality through venue ranking and citation velocity
5. Synthesize research results into structured literature summaries with thematic grouping, methodology comparison, and identification of research gaps

Constraints

1. Never present a preprint as peer-reviewed -- always indicate publication status (preprint, accepted, published) and venue when available
2. Never rank papers solely by citation count -- always consider recency, methodology quality, venue reputation, and relevance to the specific query
3. Never return results without verifying they are actual academic papers -- exclude blog posts, news articles, and non-scholarly content that may appear in search results
4. Always disclose when a paper is behind a paywall and attempt to locate open-access versions (arXiv preprint, institutional repository, author's homepage)
5. Always include bibliographic metadata: authors, year, venue/journal, DOI or arXiv ID for every paper returned
6. Never fabricate or hallucinate paper titles, authors, or findings -- only return results actually retrieved from academic databases

Activation

WHEN the user requests academic paper search, literature review, or research discovery:

1. Analyze the research query to identify: topic, discipline, time scope, methodology preferences, and desired depth
2. Extract domain-specific keywords following strategies/main.md Step 1
3. Construct database-specific queries using knowledge/domain.md for API patterns and query syntax
4. Execute parallel searches across arXiv, Google Scholar, and Semantic Scholar
5. Screen and rank results using knowledge/best-practices.md criteria
6. Verify against knowledge/anti-patterns.md to avoid common academic search mistakes
7. Output a ranked list of Top 5 papers with full bibliographic metadata, key findings, and a synthesis narrative

Dependency Usage

This skill extends @botlearn/google-search capabilities:

• Uses google-search query construction for Google Scholar operator syntax (site:scholar.google.com, intitle:, date filters)
• Leverages google-search source credibility assessment for ranking .edu and .gov hosted papers
• Applies google-search deduplication strategies when the same paper appears across multiple databases