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Systematic Literature Review

Searches arXiv and writes a cited, cross-paper literature review in APA, IEEE, or BibTeX.

Source Download skill
Repository
bytedance/deer-flow
Stars
84,876
Licence
MIT
Files
7 files

What it does

When installed, the agent follows a fixed workflow for surveys across many academic papers: it plans the scope with you, runs one arXiv search through a bundled script, has helper subagents extract key details from each paper (question, method, findings, limitations), then synthesises themes and writes a report with citations in APA, IEEE, or BibTeX format. Each paper is limited to 20 by default and capped at 50.

Great for

  • Students or researchers who need a broad overview of a topic across many arXiv papers
  • Anyone who wants consistent citations in APA, IEEE, or BibTeX for a literature survey
  • People who want an annotated bibliography or trend overview over a time window

Skip it if

  • Reviewing a single paper, which the skill itself routes to academic-paper-review; results are not a substitute for peer review or expert judgement
  • Sources outside arXiv, since the search only covers arXiv, so journal-only or paywalled literature is missed and the review may be incomplete
  • Medical or other high-stakes decisions that need a formal, protocol-driven systematic review; this skill is not a PRISMA-compliant process

Try asking

  • “Do a systematic literature review on transformer attention variants in APA format”
  • “Give me an annotated bibliography on diffusion models from the last two years”
  • “Compare methodologies across recent papers on graph neural networks for molecules, in IEEE style”
  • “Survey research trends in retrieval-augmented generation and output a BibTeX file”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Systematic Literature ReviewInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 7 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    systematic-literature-review.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip systematic-literature-review.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip systematic-literature-review.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Give a short topic (2-3 keywords) plus optional category and date range; long queries often return zero arXiv results.
  • Say which citation style you need up front, and state the time window if you want recent papers only.
  • Check the reference list against the arXiv links yourself before using the report, since the skill does not verify every claim against the full text.

What's inside

  • evals/evals.json
  • evals/trigger_eval_set.json
  • scripts/arxiv_search.py
  • SKILL.md
  • templates/apa.md
  • templates/bibtex.md
  • templates/ieee.md

Redistributed unmodified from bytedance/deer-flow under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.