Paper Scout

Search and summarize research papers in robotics and related fields. Use when asked to find recent papers, digest academic literature, or scout publications...

Security Scan

The skill's instructions and requirements are broadly consistent with its stated purpose (searching and summarizing robotics papers); it makes no disproportionate environment or credential requests, but its Google Scholar scraping step is vague about tooling and may require browser automation and network activity that you should confirm before installing.

Purpose & Capability

Name and description match the instructions: searching CrossRef and (as a fallback) Google Scholar to build Markdown digests. No unrelated credentials, binaries, or config paths are requested, so the requested capabilities line up with the stated purpose.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md instructs the agent to query CrossRef, deduplicate/filter results, and save Markdown files to ~/Desktop. It also calls for Google Scholar scraping using 'real-time browser automation' for JS-heavy pages; however it doesn't specify what automation tooling (e.g., puppeteer, selenium) or whether it will use the user's browser/profile. Writing outputs to the user's Desktop is explicit and should be acceptable if expected.

Install Mechanism

No install spec or code files are included (instruction-only). This is low-risk from an install perspective because nothing is written to disk by an installer. Any runtime downloading or automation tooling would be the agent's responsibility, not specified here.

Credentials

The skill declares no required environment variables, credentials, or config paths. That is proportionate to a read-only literature-scouting function. Note: Google Scholar scraping sometimes needs proxies, cookies, or logins in practice; the SKILL.md does not request or justify such secrets.

Persistence & Privilege

always is false and user-invocable is true (normal defaults). The SKILL.md does not request permanent agent-level privileges or changes to other skills or system-wide settings.

Assessment

This skill is coherent for its stated task, but before installing: 1) confirm how the agent will perform the Google Scholar step — what browser automation/tooling it will use and whether it will access your local browser/profile or require credentials; 2) expect the agent to write Markdown files to your Desktop (~/Desktop/YYYY-MM-DD-academic-digest.md); 3) understand that scraping Google Scholar can trigger rate limits, CAPTCHAs or violate terms of service — ask whether the implementation uses polite rate-limiting or official APIs where possible; and 4) if you need stronger guarantees, request the author to specify required tooling and to allow configuring the output path and scraping behavior (or to rely only on CrossRef/API-based sources). If you cannot confirm those points, proceed cautiously.

SKILL.md - paper_scout

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Overview

paper_scout automates searching and summarizing research papers in robotics and related fields. It uses CrossRef as the primary data source, with Google Scholar as the supplementary source for missing fields or broader coverage.

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Functionality

1. Primary Query Engine:

   • CrossRef: Quick and structured search for venues like TRO, IJRR, Science Robotics, etc.

2. Backup Source:

   • Google Scholar: Scrapes data using real-time browser automation for keywords and specific venues.

3. Filters:

   • Keywords:

     muscle parameter estimation, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, human intention prediction, human-robot interaction collaboration.

   • Top venues: TRO, IJRR, RAL, Science Robotics, TMech, CVPR, ICLR, ICCV.
   • Date: Year filtering to prioritize recent publications (e.g., since 2024).

4. Data Outputs: Structured Markdown reports saved to ~/Desktop/YYYY-MM-DD-academic-digest.md with fields:

   • Title
   • Source venue (e.g., Science Robotics)
   • Year
   • Authors
   • Abstract
   • Major contributions/innovation points

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Example Configuration

# paper_scout SKILL.yaml
crawl:
  sources:
    - crossref
    - scholar_google
queries:
  custom: []  # User-provided
  defaults:
    - reinforcement learning robotics
    - human intention prediction imitation learning
filters:
  venues: ["TRO", "IJRR", "Science Robotics", "RAL", "CVPR"]
  date: since:2024
output:
  path: ~/Desktop/{{today}}-academic-digest.md
  markdown: true

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Example Usage

1. Query Crossref for reinforcement learning robotics papers since 2024.
2. Supplement missing information by scraping Google Scholar (sorted by date).
3. Remove duplicates, filter results to top academic venues.
4. Save a Markdown digest to the desktop.

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Notes

• Automates cross-source integration with duplicate removal.
• Extensible for more specialized sources (e.g., IEEE, PubMed).
• Browser scraping (Google Scholar) requires interactive sessions for JS-heavy pages.