/ingest

SkillDocs & knowledge

Ingest a paper into the wiki — creates pages (papers + concepts + methods + people) and builds all cross-references and graph edges. Trigger whenever the user says "ingest", "add this paper", drops a `.pdf` / `.tex` / arXiv URL, or asks to fold a paper into the knowledge base.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the /ingest skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by skyllwt/autosci in .claude/skills/ingest/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Turn one paper into a fully wired set of wiki pages. Emit well-formed entities and correct cross-references; leave semantic audits (backlink symmetry, dangling nodes, field-value policing) for /check.

Use these local references on demand:

  • references/pdf-preprocessing.md — arXiv-ID recovery, tex fetching, prepare-paper handoff for direct PDF drops
  • references/dedup-policy.md — merge-vs-create decision rule for concepts and methods, and the line that separates /ingest shape checks from /check semantic audits
  • references/cross-references.md — forward/reverse link matrix and paper-to-paper edge-type selection
  • references/init-mode.md — manifest-driven handoff from /init and parallel-safety conventions
  • references/error-handling.md — source parse, API, and slug-collision fallbacks

Open runtime/schema/entities.yaml for frontmatter field definitions and runtime/templates/{kind}.md.tmpl for body section structure. For index.md, log.md, and graph/ shapes, see runtime/schema/conventions.yaml and runtime/schema/edges.yaml.

Inputs

  • source: one of — arXiv URL (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.09685), local .tex, local .pdf, or a canonical_ingest_path handed off by /init via .checkpoints/init-sources.json(see references/init-mode.md)
  • --discover (optional, default off): after the final report, invoke /discover --anchor <this-paper's-arxiv-id> and append the shortlist to the report as "Related papers you may want to ingest next". Never auto-ingests the suggestions. Skipped automatically in INIT MODE. Treat this as a user-owned flag: do not set it based on repo state.
  • --visualize (optional, default off): after Step 7 rebuild, regenerate Canvas visualization artifacts via tools/visualize.py generate-canvas. Skipped automatically in INIT MODE — the parent /init handles visualization once at fan-in. Treat this as a user-owned flag: do not set it based on repo state. (The interactive web Graph view lives in the SPA at app/modules/graph.js, served by tools/serve.py; it reads wiki/graph/ live and needs no per-ingest regeneration.)

Outputs

  • One fully-wired paper page plus linked entities (concepts, methods, people)
  • Graph edges and citations appended via tools/research_wiki.py
  • Terminal summary with page counts and suggested follow-up ingests

Wiki Interaction

Reads

  • wiki/index.md for existing slugs and tags
  • wiki/papers/*.md to detect an already-ingested paper
  • wiki/concepts/*.md and wiki/foundations/*.md for dedup matches
  • wiki/methods/*.md for dedup matches against existing reusable methods
  • wiki/people/*.md for existing authors
  • wiki/topics/*.md to place the paper under existing topics
  • wiki/graph/open_questions.md to notice when the paper addresses a known gap

Writes

  • wiki/papers/{slug}.md — CREATE
  • wiki/concepts/{slug}.md — CREATE (new) or EDIT (append key_papers, aliases, variants)
  • wiki/methods/{slug}.md — CREATE (new, only when the method is named, reusable, and citable across papers) or EDIT (append source_papers)
  • wiki/people/{slug}.md — CREATE (importance ≥ 4 only) or EDIT (append into ## Recent work)
  • wiki/topics/{slug}.md — EDIT only (no CREATE from /ingest)
  • wiki/graph/edges.jsonl — APPEND via tool
  • wiki/graph/citations.jsonl — APPEND via tool
  • wiki/graph/context_brief.md — REBUILD (skipped in INIT MODE)
  • wiki/graph/open_questions.md — REBUILD (skipped in INIT MODE)
  • wiki/index.md — APPEND
  • wiki/log.md — APPEND via tool
  • wiki/canvases/*.canvas — CREATE/OVERWRITE (only when --visualize is set and not in INIT MODE)

Graph edges created

  • paper → concept: introduces_concept / uses_concept / extends_concept / critiques_concept with confidence
  • paper → foundation: derived_from (foundation is terminal; no reverse link)
  • paper → paper: same_problem_as / similar_method_to / builds_on / challenges with confidence
  • bibliographic paper → paper: cites in graph/citations.jsonl

tools/research_wiki.py add-edge rejects missing confidence/evidence for paper-paper and paper-concept semantic edges, and rejects legacy paper-to-concept or paper-to-paper types on new writes.

Workflow

Pre-condition: working directory contains wiki/, raw/, and tools/. Resolve the Python interpreter once and reuse it:

# Find the project root via git so worktree subagents can still locate .venv.
# .venv is gitignored, so a subagent whose cwd is ../.worktrees/<branch>/
# doesn't have one — without this lookup it falls back to system python3 and
# misses the .env-loaded API keys plus the installed deps (deepxiv-sdk etc.).
# git rev-parse --git-common-dir returns the main repo's .git regardless of
# which worktree the shell is in; its parent is the project root.
GIT_COMMON_DIR=$(git rev-parse --git-common-dir 2>/dev/null || true)
PROJECT_ROOT=""
if [ -n "$GIT_COMMON_DIR" ]; then
  PROJECT_ROOT=$(cd "$(dirname "$GIT_COMMON_DIR")" 2>/dev/null && pwd)
fi

if   [ -x "$PROJECT_ROOT/.venv/bin/python" ];         then PYTHON_BIN="$PROJECT_ROOT/.venv/bin/python"
elif [ -x "$PROJECT_ROOT/.venv/Scripts/python.exe" ]; then PYTHON_BIN="$PROJECT_ROOT/.venv/Scripts/python.exe"
elif [ -x .venv/bin/python ];                         then PYTHON_BIN=.venv/bin/python
elif [ -x .venv/Scripts/python.exe ];                 then PYTHON_BIN=.venv/Scripts/python.exe
else                                                       PYTHON_BIN=python3
fi
export PYTHON_BIN

Step 1: Resolve the source

  1. If /init passed a canonical_ingest_path, enter INIT MODE and consume that path verbatim. Do not rescan raw/. See references/init-mode.md.
  2. If the source is an arXiv URL, extract the arXiv ID, use "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_s2.py paper <arxiv-id> to recover the title when possible, then run "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/init_discovery.py download --raw-root raw --arxiv-id <arxiv-id> --title "<title-or-arxiv-id>". Continue from the returned canonical_ingest_path. The helper tries arXiv source first and falls back to PDF; do not call fetch_arxiv.py for a single paper because it is RSS-only.
  3. If the source is a local .tex, use it directly.
  4. If the source is a local .pdf, run the preprocessing pipeline in references/pdf-preprocessing.md to produce a prepared .tex under raw/tmp/ before continuing.

Raw persistence rule: never copy or duplicate a file already under raw/discovered/, raw/tmp/, or raw/papers/ into a different raw subtree.

Step 2: Paper identity and enrichment

  1. Generate the paper slug:

    "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py slug "<paper-title>"
    
  2. Stop-if-exists: if wiki/papers/{slug}.md already exists and the arXiv ID or title matches, report and exit. If they differ, resolve the collision per references/error-handling.md.

  3. When an arXiv ID is available, query Semantic Scholar:

    "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_s2.py paper <arxiv-id>
    

    Use the result for venue, year, s2_id, citation count, and the evidence behind the importance score (1-5).

  4. Optional DeepXiv enrichment, when available. Skip silently if it fails:

    "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_deepxiv.py brief <arxiv-id>
    "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_deepxiv.py head <arxiv-id>
    "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_deepxiv.py social <arxiv-id>
    

    brief seeds the Key-idea section AND the new tldr frontmatter field; head sanity-checks your tex parsing against the section structure; social is an auxiliary importance signal.

Step 3: Write the paper page

Open runtime/schema/entities.yaml (papers section) for the field set and runtime/templates/papers.md.tmpl for body section order. Fill every required frontmatter field; leave cited_by empty for now (step 5 backfills it).

Three frontmatter fields the new schema requires you to populate even though they are not lint-required (so existing pages do not break, but new ingests must:):

  • tldr — one-sentence summary of the paper, suitable as a search/preview line. NOT a multi-paragraph abstract; one sentence.
  • contribution_type — list of contribution kinds drawn from the closed set [method, theory, benchmark, analysis, application, system, position, survey]. A paper may have several (e.g. method + benchmark). Do not invent new values.
  • datasets — list of dataset / benchmark names the paper uses or introduces (e.g. MMLU, BFCL, AppWorld). Use [] when the paper introduces no concrete dataset; do not fabricate.

Before writing, run a shape check on the frontmatter you are about to emit — no more than this:

  • every required key is present and non-empty
  • importance ∈ {1,2,3,4,5}; maturity on concepts ∈ the documented set; type on methods ∈ the documented set
  • contribution_type items all come from the enum above
  • YAML parses

The shape check is intentionally narrow. Backlink symmetry, dangling-node detection, and cross-entity consistency are /check's job, not this skill's.

Body sections to populate, in this order: Problem & Context, Key idea, Method, Experiment & Results, Limitations, Open questions, My take, Related.

Section semantics:

  • Problem & Context — what the paper attacks AND where the field stood before this paper. Two-in-one section.
  • Experiment & Results — setup, primary metrics, and results in one place. Do not stop at "they beat the baseline"; cite the numbers and their conditions.

Step 4: Concepts, methods, people

Follow references/dedup-policy.md. In short:

  1. For each candidate concept, call find-similar-concept first.
  2. For each candidate method (named, reusable technique that other papers could cite), check wiki/methods/ for an existing entry by name + tags. There is no find-similar-method tool — do a directory scan and a manual title/alias compare against runtime/schema/entities.yaml's methods.name field.
  3. Prefer merging into the top result. Create a new page only when no acceptable candidate exists and the paper's importance justifies it. The ## Method body section on the paper page is always filled (it is this paper's own method narrative); a separate wiki/methods/{slug}.md is only created when the technique is namable, reusable, and likely to be referenced by other papers.
  4. For each entity you write or edit, write the reverse link in the same turn. The obligation matrix lives in references/cross-references.md.
  5. Create a wiki/people/{slug}.md only for papers with importance ≥ 4. Otherwise append the paper's [[paper-slug]] to existing author pages' ## Recent work only. People entities use research_areas (list_str) and a type.kind enum (researcher / team / organization); only assign type.kind = team or organization when the byline itself names the team or organization (do not infer it from a researcher's affiliation).
  6. When creating a wiki/concepts/{slug}.md and the concept clearly belongs under an existing topic (e.g. all "self-improving coding agents" subtopics), set parent_topic: <topic-slug> (bare slug, NOT [[wikilink]]parent_topic is link-typed, not list_link). The reverse ## Concepts body section on the topic page must be appended in the same turn.
  7. When creating or editing a wiki/methods/{slug}.md, populate realizes_concepts: [[c1], [c2], ...] for any concept this method instantiates (typically the concept(s) introduced by the same paper). The reverse ## Realized by body section on each concept page must be appended in the same turn.

Step 5: Paper-to-paper edges and cited_by

Skip this whole step in INIT MODE — the parent /init handles it at fan-in.

"$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_s2.py references <arxiv-id>
"$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_s2.py citations <arxiv-id>
  • For each reference whose arXiv ID or title resolves to an existing wiki/papers/{slug}.md, add a bibliographic cites row to graph/citations.jsonl.
  • Add a semantic paper-to-paper edge in graph/edges.jsonl only when the source text gives a clear cue. Edge-type selection is in references/cross-references.md. If no semantic relation cleanly fits, keep only the cites row.
  • For each citation already in the wiki, append the citer's slug to this paper's cited_by.
  • Surface unmatched high-citation references in the final report so the user can decide whether to follow up with another /ingest.

Step 6: Topics and index

  1. Match the paper's tags against existing wiki/topics/*.md. For each match:
    • importance ≥ 4 → append to the topic's ## Seminal works AND append [[paper-slug]] to the topic's key_papers frontmatter list
    • importance < 4 → append under ## SOTA tracker or ## Recent work by year (no frontmatter update)
    • if the paper directly addresses a listed open problem (under ## Open problems / ### Known gaps / ### Methodological gaps), annotate that line on the topic page
  2. Do not create new topic pages from /ingest — topic creation belongs to /init and /edit.
  3. Append new or edited page entries to wiki/index.md under their category headings. Format: each entity kind is a top-level YAML key (matching runtime/schema/entities.yaml), with - slug: <slug> entries beneath.

Step 7: Log and rebuild

"$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py log wiki/ "ingest | added papers/<slug> | updated: <list>"

Unless in INIT MODE:

"$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py rebuild-context-brief wiki/
"$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py rebuild-open-questions wiki/

Step 7.5: Optional visualization (only if --visualize is set)

Skip this step unless the user explicitly passed --visualize. Also skip it in INIT MODE — /init's parent process regenerates Canvas + HTML once at fan-in, so individual subagents must not duplicate the work and risk concurrent writes.

When active, regenerate Canvas + HTML (best-effort; visualize failure must not fail /ingest):

"$PYTHON_BIN" tools/visualize.py generate-canvas wiki/ \
  || echo "WARN: visualize generate-canvas failed; run /visualize manually" >&2

--obsidian is not regenerated here — wiki/.obsidian/graph.json is project-level static config that only changes when config/visualize.json palette changes; run /visualize --obsidian manually for that case.

Step 8: Report

Emit one compact summary covering: pages created, pages updated, graph edges added, contradictions surfaced (if any), and high-citation references not yet in the wiki (suggested follow-up ingests). Close with:

Wiki: +1 paper, +{N} methods, +{M} concepts, +{K} edges

Step 9: Optional discovery (only if --discover is set)

Skip this step unless the user explicitly passed --discover. Also skip it in INIT MODE — /init's parent process decides whether to run discovery at fan-in, not individual subagents.

When active, invoke /discover with the just-ingested paper as the single anchor:

"$PYTHON_BIN" tools/discover.py from-anchors \
  --id <arxiv-id-of-this-paper> \
  --wiki-root wiki \
  --limit 10 \
  --output-checkpoint .checkpoints/ \
  --markdown

Append the markdown output to the report under a heading like "Related papers you may want to ingest next". Do not auto-ingest anything from the shortlist — the user picks. If discovery fails (S2 outage, all channels empty), note the failure in one line and continue — a failed /discover must not fail an otherwise successful /ingest.

Constraints

  • raw/papers/, raw/notes/, raw/web/ are user-owned and read-only. Direct local /ingest may add prepared sidecars under raw/tmp/; direct arXiv ingests may write fetched source artifacts under raw/discovered/. INIT MODE treats all of raw/ as read-only.
  • wiki/graph/ is tool-owned. Edit only through tools/research_wiki.py.
  • Slugs always come from tools/research_wiki.py slug. Never hand-craft.
  • Every forward link writes its reverse link in the same turn — the wiki's bidirectional-link invariant. The only exception is links to wiki/foundations/, which are terminal.
  • In INIT MODE, do not write reverse links into pages that already exist (created by a sibling worktree or scaffold). Record the relationship via tools/research_wiki.py add-edge only; the parent /init backfills reverse links during fan-in.
  • Source priority: .tex > .pdf > vision API fallback. Never ingest from a PDF when a usable .tex is available.
  • Ingest is conservative about new entities:
    • importance < 4: at most 1 new concept and 1 new method per paper
    • importance ≥ 4: at most 3 new concepts and 2 new methods per paper
    • Any further candidates must be merged into their nearest existing entry, or left out for /check to flag. Rationale and matching rules: references/dedup-policy.md.
  • A methods/ page is only justified when the technique is named, reusable, and citable by a future paper. The paper page's own ## Method body section captures this paper's method narrative; do not duplicate it as a methods entity unless the method earns reuse.
  • /ingest runs a shape check on its own output (required keys, enum ranges, YAML parses) and stops there. Backlink symmetry, dangling nodes, and full semantic audits belong to /check. Do not re-implement them here.
  • Assume another /ingest may run concurrently in a sibling worktree. All shared-file writes (graph/edges.jsonl, graph/citations.jsonl, index.md, log.md) must go through tools/research_wiki.py or use append-only semantics. See references/init-mode.md.
  • In INIT MODE, skip fetch_s2.py citations, fetch_s2.py references, and the rebuild-* commands — the parent /init runs them once after fan-in.
  • In INIT MODE, also skip Step 7.5 visualization regardless of whether --visualize was set; the parent /init regenerates Canvas + HTML once at fan-in to avoid concurrent writes from sibling worktrees.

Error Handling

See references/error-handling.md. Highlights: source parse failures cascade tex → PDF → vision API → user handoff; S2 outages default importance to 3 and skip citation backfill; DeepXiv outages skip enrichment silently; slug collisions append a numeric suffix.

Dependencies

Tools (via Bash)

  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py slug "<title>"
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py find-similar-concept wiki/ "<title>" --aliases "<a,b,c>"
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py add-edge wiki/ --from <id> --to <id> --type <type> --evidence "<text>" [--confidence high|medium|low]
    • --confidence high|medium|low is required for paper-paper and paper-concept semantic edges.
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py add-citation wiki/ --from papers/<citing> --to papers/<cited> --source semantic_scholar
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py log wiki/ "<message>"
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py rebuild-context-brief wiki/
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/research_wiki.py rebuild-open-questions wiki/
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/prepare_paper_source.py --raw-root raw --source <local-path> [--title "<recovered-title>"] [--arxiv-id "<recovered-arxiv-id>"]
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/init_discovery.py download --raw-root raw --arxiv-id <id> --title "<title-or-id>" — single-paper arXiv source/PDF download into raw/discovered/
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_s2.py paper|citations|references <arxiv-id>
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/fetch_deepxiv.py brief|head|social <arxiv-id>
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/discover.py from-anchors --id <arxiv-id> --wiki-root wiki --limit 10 --output-checkpoint .checkpoints/ --markdown — only when --discover is set
  • "$PYTHON_BIN" tools/visualize.py generate-canvas wiki/ — only when --visualize is set and not in INIT MODE

Shared References

  • .claude/skills/shared-references/citation-verification.md

Skills

  • /init — calls /ingest in parallel subagents via INIT MODE
  • /check — audits wiki state after /ingest completes; owns every semantic check /ingest intentionally does not perform
  • /discover — optional follow-up when --discover is set; produces a shortlist of related papers the user may want to ingest next
  • /visualize — Step 7.5 (when --visualize is set and not in INIT MODE) regenerates Canvas + HTML by calling tools/visualize.py directly (best-effort)

External APIs

  • Semantic Scholar (via tools/fetch_s2.py)
  • DeepXiv (via tools/fetch_deepxiv.py, optional; graceful fallback)
  • arXiv (source download)

Signals

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skill
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ingest-skyllwt
Source
github.com/skyllwt/autosci