Alphaxiv Paper Lookup

AlphaXiv Paper Lookup

Look up any arxiv paper on alphaxiv.org to get a structured AI-generated overview. This is faster and more reliable than trying to read a raw PDF.

When to Use

• User shares an arxiv URL (e.g. arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345)
• User mentions a paper ID (e.g. 2401.12345)
• User asks you to explain, summarize, or analyze a research paper
• User shares an alphaxiv URL (e.g. alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.12345)

Workflow

Step 1: Extract the paper ID

Parse the paper ID from whatever the user provides:

| Input | Paper ID | | ------------------------------------------ | -------------- | | https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345 | 2401.12345 | | https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.12345 | 2401.12345 | | https://alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.12345 | 2401.12345 | | 2401.12345v2 | 2401.12345v2 | | 2401.12345 | 2401.12345 |

Step 2: Fetch the machine-readable report

curl -s "https://alphaxiv.org/overview/{PAPER_ID}.md"

This returns the intermediate machine-readable report — a structured, detailed analysis of the paper optimized for LLM consumption. One call, plain markdown, no JSON parsing.

If this returns 404, the report hasn't been generated for this paper yet.

Step 3: If you need more detail, fetch the full paper text

If the report doesn't contain the specific information the user is asking about (e.g. a particular equation, table, or section), fetch the full paper text:

curl -s "https://alphaxiv.org/abs/{PAPER_ID}.md"

This returns the full extracted text of the paper as markdown. Only use this as a fallback — the report is usually sufficient.

If this returns 404, the full text hasn't been processed yet. As a last resort, direct the user to the PDF at https://arxiv.org/pdf/{PAPER_ID}.

Error Handling

• 404 on Step 2: Report not generated for this paper.
• 404 on Step 3: Full text not yet extracted for this paper.

Notes

• No authentication required — these are public endpoints.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: christyjacob4
• Source: christyjacob4/claude-tricks
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.