0xmerl99/paperclaw

Living Review

Overview

Maintains a continuously updated, structured literature review for a research team. Ingests papers from multiple sources, synthesizes findings across the team's collective reading, and produces a living document that evolves as new work is published.

When to Use

• User asks to "update our literature review" or "add this paper to the review"
• User wants a summary of what their team has read on a topic
• User asks "what do we know about X based on our papers?"
• Onboarding a new team member who needs a fast overview of prior work
• Preparing a manuscript introduction or related work section

Key Capabilities

• Ingest PDFs, DOIs, arXiv IDs, or PubMed IDs into a shared knowledge base
• Extract key claims, methods, datasets, and limitations per paper
• Auto-group papers by theme, methodology, or recency
• Generate a structured Markdown or LaTeX review draft
• Track which team member added which paper and when
• Flag papers that conflict with or extend each other
• Diff the review against previous versions to show what changed

Usage Examples

Add a paper to the living review

review.add_paper(
    doi="10.1038/s41586-024-00001-0",
    added_by="alice",
    tags=["transformer", "protein-folding", "benchmark"]
)

Generate a living review draft on a topic

review.generate_draft(
    topic="attention mechanisms in protein language models",
    format="latex",
    max_papers=40,
    include_team_notes=True
)

Show what changed since last week

review.diff(since="2024-01-01", show_new_papers=True, show_updated_claims=True)

Output Format

Produces structured Markdown with sections: Background, Key Methods, Datasets Used, Open Questions, Recent Additions. Each claim is traceable to a source paper and team contributor.

Notes

• Works best when combined with arxiv-monitor and semantic-scholar skills for automatic ingestion
• Team notes and annotations are preserved across updates — never overwritten
• Supports BibTeX export for manuscript preparation