CNKI Watch

Query CNKI by journal name or research topic, and create journal or topic subscriptions that periodically push new CNKI paper metadata into the main OpenClaw chat. Use for one-off CNKI lookups and recurring CNKI monitoring.

Use this skill when the user wants CNKI results in either of these modes:

• manual journal query: return papers from a named journal,
• manual topic query: return CNKI papers related to a research topic,
• journal subscription: periodically push new papers from a named journal,
• topic subscription: periodically push new papers for a research topic.

When to use

• The user gives a journal name and wants a one-off CNKI query.
• The user gives a research topic and wants titles plus source metadata.
• The user wants a recurring CNKI watch delivered back into OpenClaw.

Preconditions

• The skill ships as a normal npm project with a root package.json and declared dependencies.
• Preferred runtime is still the OpenClaw gateway container, but local development runs are supported on Windows/macOS/Linux with Node.js 22+.
• On local runs, the script auto-installs missing JavaScript dependencies from package.json on first use. Browser discovery supports Playwright-managed Chromium plus common Chrome/Edge installs. No custom NODE_PATH is required.
• Prefer CNKI_COOKIE. CNKI_USERNAME plus CNKI_PASSWORD is a fallback path for establishing a CNKI login session.
• If CNKI shows captcha, slider verification, or another human-check page, stop and ask for a fresh CNKI_COOKIE or a manually refreshed session. Do not invent alternative scraping logic in the model.
• Treat OpenClaw runtime behavior as authoritative. The docs define the public contract; do not optimize for quick_validate.py quirks at the expense of runtime compatibility.

Reference files:

• references/config.md
• references/schedule.md
• references/commands.md

Canonical entrypoint

Always use the bundled script instead of ad hoc CNKI browsing:

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs <command> [flags]

For local development outside OpenClaw:

bash

cd {baseDir}
npm install
node scripts/cnki-watch.mjs --help
npx cnki-watch query-topic --topic "人工智能" --json

Core commands

One-off journal lookup

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs query-journal --journal "计算机学报" --json

One-off topic lookup

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs query-topic --topic "大模型安全" --json

Create a journal subscription

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs subscribe-journal --journal "计算机学报" --schedule "daily@09:00" --json

Create a topic subscription

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs subscribe-topic --topic "大模型安全" --schedule "weekly@mon@09:00" --json

List and remove subscriptions

bash

node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs list-subscriptions --json
node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs unsubscribe --id "<subscription-id>" --json
node {baseDir}/scripts/cnki-watch.mjs run-subscription --id "<subscription-id>" --json

Workflow

1. Decide whether the user wants a manual query or a subscription.
2. Preserve the journal name or topic text exactly unless the user explicitly asks to normalize it.
3. Use query-journal for a journal lookup and query-topic for a topic lookup.
4. Use subscribe-journal or subscribe-topic for recurring pushes. If the user does not supply a schedule, use the configured defaultSchedule.
5. Respect skill config for browserProfile, timezone, defaultSchedule, maxManualResults, and maxPushResults.
6. After creating, listing, running, or removing a subscription, report the subscription id, schedule, timezone, and status returned by the script.

Delivery rules

• Subscription jobs run as isolated cron turns with no automatic announce delivery.
• The script is responsible for posting new findings back to the main OpenClaw chat, typically through chat.inject.
• Manual queries return metadata to the current turn and do not create subscription state.
• Subscription runs should push only new items and stay silent when there is no delta.
• Return metadata and CNKI links only. Do not promise PDFs, full text, or other copyrighted payloads.

Failure handling

• If the script reports missing browser dependencies or an unusable runtime, fix the OpenClaw runtime and retry.
• If CNKI blocks the session with captcha or another verification flow, stop and ask for a fresh CNKI_COOKIE or a manually refreshed CNKI session.
• If a journal lookup returns weak matches, verify the exact journal name and tell the user that source filtering may need the precise CNKI source string.
• If credentials are missing, ask the user to populate CNKI_COOKIE, or CNKI_USERNAME plus CNKI_PASSWORD, in the skill env config before retrying.