Search Paper

A single skill that wraps five platform drivers — two preprint archives (arXiv, IACR ePrint) and three metadata services (Semantic Scholar, DBLP, OpenAlex). The SKILL.md itself acts as the orchestrator: each script does one thing per platform, and the agent chains them.

Usage

Invoke this skill by name. On slash-command hosts: /search-paper "<query>".

search-paper "post-quantum threshold signatures" --source iacr --max-results 15

Scripts

Run via Bash. All scripts emit JSON on stdout.

arxiv.py — arXiv preprint server

python3 arxiv.py search "BFT consensus communication complexity" --max-results 10 --categories cs.CR,cs.DC
python3 arxiv.py recent "threshold signatures" --max-results 10 --categories cs.CR
python3 arxiv.py download 2305.12345 --output-dir reaper-workspace/papers/
python3 arxiv.py journal-ref 2305.12345

• search — array of {arxiv_id, title, authors, year, abstract, categories, pdf_url, published, journal_ref} sorted by relevance.
• recent — same fields, sorted by submission date (newest first). Requires a query and/or --categories.
• download — saves PDF, returns {path, title}.
• journal-ref — author-supplied venue (sparse but authoritative when present).

iacr.py — IACR ePrint archive

python3 iacr.py search "threshold signatures" --max-results 10
python3 iacr.py recent --max-results 10
python3 iacr.py download 2024/1234 --output-dir reaper-workspace/papers/
python3 iacr.py url 2024/1234
python3 iacr.py pubinfo 2024/1234

• search — array of {eprint_id, title, authors, year, abstract, publication_info, venue, pdf_url, url}. Top 5 results are enriched with metadata from the paper page (including publication_info).
• recent — most-recently-posted ePrint papers.
• download / url — PDF download and URL resolution.
• pubinfo — scrapes the "Publication info" line from the paper page (e.g. "A major revision of CRYPTO 2023") and best-effort parses out the venue acronym + year.

semantic_scholar.py — Semantic Scholar metadata

python3 semantic_scholar.py venue --arxiv 2305.12345
python3 semantic_scholar.py venue --title "HotStuff: BFT Consensus in the Lens of Blockchain"
python3 semantic_scholar.py citations 2305.12345 --max-results 20

• venue — looks up the publication venue by arXiv ID (preferred when available — exact match) or by title (fuzzy match via /paper/search/match). Returns {found, venue, venue_full, venue_type, year, title, authors}.
• citations — forward (who cites this) + backward (what this builds on) citations. Each entry includes venue when known.

dblp.py — DBLP (CS-focused)

python3 dblp.py venue "HotStuff: BFT Consensus" --author "Yin"

• venue — title (+ optional author surname) lookup. DBLP is authoritative for CS conference and journal venues.

openalex.py — OpenAlex (broad coverage)

python3 openalex.py venue "HotStuff: BFT Consensus in the Lens of Blockchain"

• venue — title-based lookup. Use when DBLP doesn't cover the venue (non-CS, niche workshops, books).

Role

• Standalone: Invoked directly by the user to search for papers, trace citations, or resolve a venue.
• Building block: Called by /review-literature and /investigate for structured paper search and venue resolution.

Instructions

When invoked directly:

1. Parse the user's query and any flags from the argument.
2. Pick the right script(s):
   • Crypto/security topic → run iacr.py search AND arxiv.py search --categories cs.CR.
   • General CS topic → run arxiv.py search with appropriate categories.
   • Citation context → semantic_scholar.py citations <arxiv_id>.
   • Venue resolution → follow the Venue Resolution Protocol below.
3. Format paper results as a readable table:

| # | Title | Authors | Year | Venue | ID | Link |
|---|-------|---------|------|-------|----|------|
| 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | arXiv:XXXX.XXXXX | [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/XXXX.XXXXX) |

4. For each highly relevant result, show the abstract excerpt.

Venue Resolution Protocol

A paper's archive ID (arXiv, ePrint) is not its publication venue. Resolve the actual venue (CRYPTO, S&P, PODC, …) for every paper that goes into a literature review or report references section. Run the layers in order and stop at the first success:

Layer 1 — Semantic Scholar (cheapest, highest hit-rate)

# arXiv-known papers
python3 semantic_scholar.py venue --arxiv <arxiv_id>

# ePrint-only papers
python3 semantic_scholar.py venue --title "<exact title>"

If found: true and venue is non-empty → done. Record source = "semantic_scholar".

Layer 2 — Author-supplied field on the source archive

Authors sometimes mark the venue on their own preprint:

# arXiv: the journal_ref field
python3 arxiv.py journal-ref <arxiv_id>

# ePrint: the "Publication info" line
python3 iacr.py pubinfo <eprint_id>

If a non-empty journal_ref / publication_info is returned → done. Record source = "arxiv_journal_ref" or "iacr_pubinfo".

Layer 3 — DBLP (CS-authoritative title+author search)

python3 dblp.py venue "<title>" --author "<first author surname>"

If found: true → done. Record source = "dblp".

Layer 4 — OpenAlex (broad coverage)

python3 openalex.py venue "<title>"

If found: true → done. Record source = "openalex".

Layer 5 — Preprint-only label

If all four layers fail, label the entry (preprint) rather than silently omitting. Do not guess a venue from the topic or author affiliation — an unverified guess is worse than an honest "preprint only".

Notes

• Layers 1 + 2 cover ~80% of papers at near-zero cost. Add layers 3 + 4 only when needed.
• Cache results in your workspace notes — don't re-resolve the same paper across cycles.
• When two sources disagree, prefer the higher-tier source name (Semantic Scholar's publicationVenue.name over DBLP's terse acronym, etc.). Record both if confidence is low.

Quality Criteria

• Search returns results (graceful error message if API is down or script fails)
• Results are formatted as a readable table with abstract excerpts for top hits
• For literature reviews and synthesized reports, every cited paper has a resolved venue or an explicit (preprint) label — no entry shows only an arXiv/ePrint ID where a venue is expected
• If a script fails (missing deps, network error), report the error to the caller and continue with other layers

Dependencies

pip install arxiv requests beautifulsoup4