Create Literature Note
SkillDocs & knowledgeCreates a structured annotation note in references/ with sections for research question, data, findings, and relevance. Use when documenting a paper.
Instructions available. Your AI can read the instructions. Execution depends on the setup they require.
Account requirements not reviewed. Check the skill instructions before use; ahel provides instructions and does not run this skill.
Add ahel to your AI once: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code or Codex. Then ask it to use this.
Then ask your AI: use the Create Literature Note skill
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills in skills/29-quarcs-lab-project20XXy/dot-claude/skills/literature-note/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
Create a structured annotation note for a paper in references/.
Arguments
$ARGUMENTS— a citation key fromreferences.bib, a DOI, or a paper description (e.g., "acemoglu2001colonial" or "Acemoglu 2001 colonial origins")
Steps
-
Parse the argument:
- If it matches an existing key in
references.bib, use that entry's metadata - If it is a DOI or description, search for the paper and optionally add it to
references.bibfirst (offer to run the/project:citeworkflow)
- If it matches an existing key in
-
If a URL or DOI is provided, attempt to fetch and read the paper to extract key information.
-
Create a Markdown file in
references/named<citation-key>.mdwith this structure:# <Author (Year)> — <Short Title> **Citation key:** `<key>` **Full reference:** <formatted reference> ## Research Question [What question does this paper address?] ## Identification Strategy [How do the authors establish causality? What is the main source of variation?] ## Data and Sample [What data do they use? What is the sample period, unit of observation, and sample size?] ## Key Findings - [Finding 1] - [Finding 2] - [Finding 3] ## Methodology Notes [Econometric methods, estimators, robustness checks worth noting] ## Relevance to This Project [How does this paper relate to the current research? What can we build on or contrast with?] -
If information about the paper was retrieved (from the web or a PDF), pre-fill the sections with extracted content. Otherwise, leave the bracket placeholders for the user to fill in.
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Report the file path and remind the user to fill in any remaining placeholder sections.
Error handling
- If the citation key is not found in
references.biband cannot be resolved, ask the user for more details. - If
references/<key>.mdalready exists, show the existing note and ask if the user wants to update it.
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 4k
- Forks
- 531
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
Advanced
- Item type
- skill
- Key
literature-note- Source
- github.com/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills
github.com/brycewang-stanford/auto-empirical-research-skills
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