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openalex-database

Query and analyze scholarly literature using the OpenAlex database. This skill should be used when searching for academic papers, analyzing research trends, finding works by authors or institutions, tracking citations, discovering open access publications, or conducting bibliometric analysis across 240M+ scholarly works. Use for literature searches, research output analysis, citation analysis, and academic database queries.

63

Quality

79%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Low

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tessl review fix ./backend/cli/skills/databases/openalex-database/SKILL.md
SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

68%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.

The body is a highly actionable, example-driven reference with real, existing bundle files and clear pointer navigation, but it is overlong for a SKILL.md: best-practice material duplicates the capability examples, and API-reference content is inlined rather than kept in references/api_guide.md. Batch and large-extraction workflows also lack validation checkpoints, capping workflow clarity at 3.

Suggestions

Consolidate the 'Critical Best Practices' section: replace the repeated code blocks with one-line cross-references to the capability examples, and delete the unexplained 'LitLLM with OpenRouter / don't use Perplexity API' note from the closing Notes.

Move the 'Common Filter Patterns', 'Entity Types', and 'External IDs' sections into references/api_guide.md, leaving only a one-line pointer so SKILL.md stays a lean overview.

Add validation steps to the batch and large-extraction workflows: verify returned result counts against requested totals (batch_lookup, paginate_all max_results), check for partial failures, and instruct retry/backoff behavior on incomplete data before exporting to CSV.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The body is dense with executable code and avoids explaining concepts Claude already knows, but the 'Critical Best Practices' section re-explains patterns already demonstrated in the capabilities section (two-step lookup, per-page size, batching, sampling), and the unexplained closing note about 'Use LitLLM with OpenRouter... don't use Perplexity API directly' is padding. Mostly efficient but could be tightened.

3 / 5

Actionability

Every capability ships copy-paste-ready, executable code with realistic arguments (e.g., client.search_works with filter_params and sort, find_author_works(author_name="Jennifer Doudna"), batch lookups with real DOIs, pagination, and a complete CSV export loop), covering the common cases comprehensively.

5 / 5

Workflow Clarity

The two-step entity-lookup pattern is explicitly sequenced and Troubleshooting provides error-to-fix feedback (403 → verify email/rate; empty results → check filter syntax), but the batch operations (batch_lookup of up to 50 IDs, paginate_all with max_results=10000, 25k samples) have no validation or verification steps such as checking returned counts or handling partial failures. The batch-operations cap holds this at 3.

3 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

Good structure: overview and capabilities in the body with well-signaled, one-level-deep references ('See references/api_guide.md for: Complete filter syntax, All available endpoints...'; 'See references/common_queries.md for...'), both of which exist. However, the inline 'Common Filter Patterns', 'Entity Types', and 'External IDs' sections duplicate api_guide.md material that belongs in the reference file, so the split is not fully clean.

4 / 5

Total

15

/

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 what the skill does and when to use it, with concrete domain-specific actions and natural trigger phrases. Its main weaknesses are mild redundancy in the trailing 'Use for' restatement and a few missing common synonyms (e.g., 'journals', 'find papers') that would improve trigger coverage.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

Lists multiple concrete, domain-tied actions ('searching for academic papers, analyzing research trends, finding works by authors or institutions, tracking citations, discovering open access publications, or conducting bibliometric analysis'), but the closing 'Use for literature searches, research output analysis, citation analysis' sentence largely restates them rather than broadening coverage, so it falls short of the comprehensive level-5 anchor.

4 / 5

Completeness

Explicitly answers both 'what' ('Query and analyze scholarly literature using the OpenAlex database') and 'when' with doubled concrete trigger clauses ('This skill should be used when searching for academic papers... Use for literature searches, research output analysis, citation analysis'), matching the top anchor.

5 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

Natural phrases users would say are present ('academic papers', 'research trends', 'citations', 'open access', 'bibliometric analysis', 'literature searches'), but common variations like 'find papers', 'journals', 'publications', or metric names (h-index) are missing.

4 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The named database (OpenAlex) and scholarly-literature niche make it mostly distinct, but generic triggers like 'citation analysis' and 'literature searches' create minor overlap risk with other scholarly-database skills, so it does not reach the minimal-conflict level-5 anchor.

4 / 5

Total

17

/

20

Passed

Validation

87%

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

Validation — 14 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

CriteriaDescriptionResult

metadata_version

'metadata.version' is missing

Warning

frontmatter_unknown_keys

Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata

Warning

Total

14

/

16

Passed

Repository

synthetic-sciences/openscience

Path

backend/cli/skills/databases/openalex-database/SKILL.md

Reviewed

Table of Contents

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