literature-grounding

Overview

Use this skill to decide when a request needs literature grounding and what depth of literature research is appropriate.

Quick Start

• For broad public-background exploration or quick web context, ordinary online/web search is often enough.
• If the user asks for papers, prior work, representative literature, supporting evidence, benchmark conventions, or a reusable citation pack, call run_literature_research.
• When calling run_literature_research, keep query as the literature question and provide a short domain phrase in topic when possible; scholarly databases should not receive the full reporting instruction text.
• Within literature research itself, default to web-first orientation. Only escalate to OpenAlex / Semantic Scholar when paper metadata, citations, DOI/year/venue details, or explicit literature grounding are actually needed.
• Default to depth=quick for representative-paper requests.
• Use depth=standard for method conventions, benchmark framing, or comparative evidence.
• Use depth=deep_report only for explicit deep-review or survey-style requests.

Suggested tools

• run_literature_research

Workflow

1. Decide whether literature is actually needed

Only trigger literature work when the user explicitly asks for papers, prior work, supporting evidence, benchmark context, or literature-grounded method conventions. Use normal web/online search first when the need is broad background, public-page summaries, or lightweight orientation rather than paper-level grounding.

2. Choose the smallest useful depth

Use quick for representative papers and fast grounding. Use standard for conventions, benchmark framing, or related-work summaries. Use focused when a narrow scientific question needs targeted evidence. Reserve deep_report for explicit deep-review requests.

3. Route sources conservatively

Do not automatically hit both scholarly metadata APIs and public web in the same first pass. Start with public web when the request is broad, contextual, or public-summary-friendly. Use OpenAlex / Semantic Scholar when the user clearly needs paper-level grounding or when the web pass is too weak.

4. Keep the pack clean

Use the returned literature context pack as the planning/evidence object. Do not surface the raw retrieval process, intermediate search noise, or browser-style exploration steps to the main agent context.

Method-critical defaults

• Literature grounding is not a default-on behavior. It should be explicitly requested by the user or justified by the planning need.
• Treat run_literature_research as a precise grounding path, not the default replacement for ordinary web search.
• Quick paper-finding requests should not silently escalate into deep literature reviews.
• When literature is used to justify quantitative settings or benchmark conventions, carry those conclusions forward explicitly into proposal text or task packets.

Output Contract

Return a compact literature pack with a short summary, a small key-paper set, citations/links, confidence, and follow-up questions when uncertainty remains.

References

• Use catalysis-prior-art-and-benchmarking when the literature task is specifically about heterogeneous-catalysis benchmarks or method conventions.