citation-management
Comprehensive citation management for academic research. Search Google Scholar and PubMed for papers, extract accurate metadata, validate citations, and generate properly formatted BibTeX entries. This skill should be used when you need to find papers, verify citation information, convert DOIs to BibTeX, or ensure reference accuracy in scientific writing.
77
73%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
81%
1.84xAverage score across 3 eval scenarios
Advisory
Suggest reviewing before use
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./scientific-skills/citation-management/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
100%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is a strong skill description that clearly communicates its purpose, lists specific capabilities, and includes explicit trigger guidance. It covers natural user terms comprehensively and occupies a distinct niche that minimizes conflict with other skills. The description is well-structured, concise, and uses appropriate third-person voice throughout.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: search Google Scholar and PubMed, extract metadata, validate citations, generate BibTeX entries. These are clear, actionable capabilities. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (search databases, extract metadata, validate citations, generate BibTeX) and 'when' with an explicit 'This skill should be used when...' clause listing specific trigger scenarios like finding papers, verifying citations, converting DOIs, and ensuring reference accuracy. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Includes strong natural keywords users would say: 'Google Scholar', 'PubMed', 'papers', 'citations', 'BibTeX', 'DOIs', 'reference', 'scientific writing', 'academic research'. Good coverage of terms across the citation management domain. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Occupies a clear niche around academic citation management with distinct triggers like 'BibTeX', 'DOIs', 'Google Scholar', 'PubMed', and 'citation validation'. Unlikely to conflict with general writing or document skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
47%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
This skill has a well-structured multi-phase workflow with clear validation checkpoints and good end-to-end examples, but is severely undermined by extreme verbosity and redundancy. Content is repeated across workflow phases, tool documentation, and example sections. Large sections (schematics promotion, venue tiers, author reputation indicators, 10-item pitfalls list) add little value for Claude and consume significant token budget. The referenced bundle files don't exist, making the progressive disclosure structure aspirational rather than functional.
Suggestions
Cut content by 60-70%: remove the schematics section entirely, collapse the Tools section (it repeats the workflow), remove 'When to Use This Skill' and 'Common Pitfalls' lists that Claude can infer, and move detailed search syntax to the referenced .md files.
Remove redundant script documentation — document each script once (either in the workflow or in a Tools section, not both) and keep only one complete end-to-end example instead of four overlapping ones.
Either provide the bundle files (references/*.md, scripts/*.py) or remove references to them; currently the skill promises progressive disclosure but delivers a monolith.
Remove the 'Visual Enhancement with Scientific Schematics' section which is unrelated to citation management and appears to be boilerplate injected from another skill.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | Extremely verbose at 500+ lines. Massive redundancy: every script's usage is documented multiple times (once in the workflow, once in the tools section, once in examples). The 'When to Use This Skill' list, 'Common Pitfalls', 'Best Practices', venue quality tiers, citation count thresholds, and author reputation indicators are all things Claude already knows. The 'Visual Enhancement with Scientific Schematics' section is entirely irrelevant to citation management. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | Provides concrete bash commands and BibTeX examples that appear copy-paste ready, but all scripts referenced (search_google_scholar.py, validate_citations.py, etc.) are not bundled, so none of the commands are actually executable. The BibTeX format examples are genuinely useful and concrete, but the core workflow depends on scripts that don't exist in the bundle. | 2 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The 5-phase workflow (Discovery → Metadata Extraction → BibTeX Formatting → Validation → Integration) is clearly sequenced with explicit validation checkpoints. Phase 4 includes validation with auto-fix and error recovery loops. The end-to-end examples in 'Example Workflows' show complete pipelines with validation steps before final output. | 3 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | References to external files (references/google_scholar_search.md, references/pubmed_search.md, etc.) are well-signaled, but no bundle files are actually provided. The SKILL.md itself is monolithic — enormous amounts of content that should be in the referenced files (full PubMed query syntax, Google Scholar operators, complete script documentation) are inlined, defeating the purpose of the referenced structure. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 8 / 12 Passed |
Validation
81%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 9 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
skill_md_line_count | SKILL.md is long (1114 lines); consider splitting into references/ and linking | Warning |
metadata_version | 'metadata.version' is missing | Warning |
Total | 9 / 11 Passed | |
- Repository
- K-Dense-AI/claude-scientific-skills
- Commit
cbcae7b
- Reviewed
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