google-scholar-search

Search Google Scholar for academic papers and author profiles. Use when discovering papers to triage — by keyword, author, or year range. Returns titles, authors, abstracts, and links. Triggers: search papers, find papers, google scholar, search scholar, find author, author profile, literature search, paper discovery, search academic literature.

Quality

86%

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Quality

Content

88%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

High-quality content: executable, script-accurate commands, a clearly sequenced workflow with explicit block-detection validation and recovery steps, and appropriate offloading of setup detail to a real reference file. Remaining issues are minor: consolidated repetition of the rate-limit guidance would save tokens, and the requirements.txt link is broken.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is lean with no explanations of concepts Claude already knows, but the block/CAPTCHA guidance is repeated across Mindset point 2, Workflow step 5, and two separate anti-patterns ("NEVER loop on blocked responses" and "NEVER report 'no results' without checking for a silent block"), which could be consolidated. Not 5 because that repetition is trimmable; not 3 because only one topic is duplicated and everything else earns its place.	4 / 5
Actionability	All five command examples are copy-paste ready and were verified against the script's actual argparse interface (search/advanced/author subcommands with matching --query, --author, --year-start/--year-end, --format, and --output flags), plus a concrete JSON preview one-liner and a retry command. Specific examples cover the common cases.	5 / 5
Workflow Clarity	The six-step workflow has a clear sequence with explicit validation (check raw response length before reporting "no results") and a feedback loop for error recovery (HTTP 429 → wait 60 s → retry once → MCP fallback), plus a user-confirmation gate before triage. The skill is read-only discovery, so the destructive/batch validation cap does not apply.	5 / 5
Progressive Disclosure	The body is a well-organized overview with clearly labeled one-level-deep references, and setup detail is appropriately split into references/setup-and-troubleshooting.md (which exists and matches). However, the References section links a requirements.txt that is absent from the bundle, a minor organization gap that prevents a top score.	4 / 5
	Total	18 / 20 Passed

Description

83%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

A strong description that clearly states concrete capabilities, returned data, and explicit use-when guidance with a trigger list in third-person voice. The only weaknesses are minor: a missing capability (JSON export) and a few absent natural trigger synonyms alongside generic terms that slightly overlap sibling research skills.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Multiple concrete third-person actions are stated ("Search Google Scholar for academic papers and author profiles", "Returns titles, authors, abstracts, and links"), but the JSON-export capability is omitted, leaving a minor coverage gap that keeps it below the comprehensive anchor.	4 / 5
Completeness	It explicitly answers what the skill does (search papers and author profiles, returning titles/authors/abstracts/links) and when to use it ("Use when discovering papers to triage — by keyword, author, or year range") plus a concrete "Triggers:" list, matching the top anchor. It is not 4 because the 'when' guidance is fully explicit with concrete trigger phrases rather than merely present.	5 / 5
Trigger Term Quality	The explicit trigger list covers strong natural phrases ("search papers", "google scholar", "find author", "literature search"), but common variations such as "find articles", "journal articles", or "citation search" are missing, so coverage is good rather than comprehensive.	4 / 5
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Distinct markers like "google scholar" and "search scholar" establish a clear niche, but generic triggers ("search papers", "literature search", "paper discovery") create minor overlap risk with closely related research skills such as semantic-scholar or triage-paper.	4 / 5
	Total	17 / 20 Passed

Validation

81%

Warnings & errors only

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 13 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
allowed_tools_field	'allowed-tools' contains unusual tool name(s)	Warning
metadata_version	'metadata.version' is missing	Warning
relative_links	Relative link issues: 1 missing	Warning

	Total	13 / 16 Passed

Repository: pantheon-org/tekhne
Path: skills/documentation/research/google-scholar-search/SKILL.md
Commit: a1083f4

Reviewed: 2 hours ago

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