/literature-review

name: literature-review
description: Conduct comprehensive literature reviews using multi-perspective dialogue simulation. Generate diverse expert personas, conduct grounded Q&A conversations, and synthesize findings into structured knowledge. Use when starting a new research project or writing a survey section.
argument-hint: [topic]

Literature Review

Conduct deep literature reviews through multi-perspective dialogue and systematic search.

Input

• `$0` — Research topic or question
• `$1` — Optional: specific focus or angle

References

• Multi-perspective dialogue prompts (STORM): `~/.claude/skills/literature-review/references/dialogue-prompts.md`
• Literature review workflow (AgentLaboratory): `~/.claude/skills/literature-review/references/review-workflow.md`

Scripts (from literature-search skill)

# Search Semantic Scholar
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_semantic_scholar.py --query "topic" --max-results 20

# Search OpenAlex
python ~/.claude/skills/literature-search/scripts/search_openalex.py --query "topic" --max-results 20

# Search arXiv
python ~/.claude/skills/deep-research/scripts/search_arxiv.py --query "topic" --max-results 10

Workflow

Step 1: Generate Expert Personas (from STORM)

Given the topic, create 3-5 diverse expert personas:

• Each represents a different perspective, role, or research angle
• Example: "ML systems researcher focused on efficiency", "Theoretical statistician concerned with guarantees"
• Use the persona generation prompts from references

Step 2: Multi-Perspective Dialogue

For each persona, simulate a multi-turn Q&A conversation: 1. **Persona asks a question** from their unique angle 2. **Generate search queries** from the question 3. **Search literature** using the search scripts 4. **Synthesize an answer** grounded in retrieved papers with inline citations 5. **Record the dialogue turn** with search results 6. Repeat for 3-5 turns per persona 7. End when persona says "Thank you so much for your help!"

Step 3: Synthesize Knowledge

• Combine all persona conversations into a unified knowledge base
• Remove redundancy across personas
• Organize by theme/subtopic
• Generate an outline based on the collected information

Step 4: Generate Literature Review

• Write a structured review organized by the generated outline
• Every claim must be supported by a citation
• Include a summary table of key papers (method, contribution, limitations)

Output

A structured literature review with: 1. **Outline** — Hierarchical topic structure 2. **Per-section summaries** — Each grounded in retrieved papers 3. **Paper database** — Structured entries for all reviewed papers 4. **Knowledge gaps** — Identified areas needing further investigation

Rules

• Every sentence in the review must be supported by gathered information
• If information is not found, explicitly state the gap
• Cite broadly — cover diverse approaches, not just the most popular
• Include recent papers (last 2-3 years) alongside foundational work
• Use inline citations: "Smith et al. [1] propose..."

Related Skills

• Upstream: [literature-search](../literature-search/), [deep-research](../deep-research/)
• Downstream: [related-work-writing](../related-work-writing/), [research-planning](../research-planning/)
• See also: [survey-generation](../survey-generation/)