Lit Review Table

Literature Review -> Excel Table

Turns a topic into a curated, formatted Excel table of papers, and optionally downloads the PDFs and fills method/detail columns from their full text. Helper scripts in this skill dir do the mechanical work; you drive the search and curation in between. Papers default to economics journals + economics-adjacent working papers unless the user says otherwise.

Interpreter: these scripts need Python with openpyxl (and pypdf for the full-text extractor - python -m pip install pypdf once). On this machine Python is C:/Users/Admin/anaconda3/python.exe (the default python is a broken Store stub). Examples below use it directly. Write candidates.json / papers.json to a scratch location and put the final .xlsx + any papers/ folder in the user's working directory.

Workflow

1. Scope the run. Confirm: topic/question; any field scope (default economics + adjacent

working papers); year range; roughly how many papers; and any custom columns for this run (e.g. "method", "identification strategy", "relevance to my project"). Ask whether they want the PDFs downloaded (default: no).

1. Search. OpenAlex is the backbone; widen with the other helpers + WebSearch, pull more

than you need, then cut. ``bash PY="C:/Users/Admin/anaconda3/python.exe"; SK=".claude/skills/lit-review-table" "$PY" $SK/openalex_search.py "" -n 40 -o candidates.json # options: --from-year 2010 --to-year 2024 --min-cites 20 --no-econ-filter # fetch a SPECIFIC known paper precisely: openalex_search.py "" --by-title "$PY" $SK/search_more.py "" -n 25 -o more.json # arXiv + Semantic Scholar (preprints, SSRN, NBER) ` Each record has authors, year, title, journal, paper_type, doi, link, keywords, abstract, citation_count, oa_status, and pdf_candidates` (used by the downloader).

• Beyond these APIs: for specific econ working-paper series (IZA, CEPR, SSRN, recent NBER)

that none index well, use WebSearch with the series name in the query, then verify each hit by fetching its PDF directly. RePEc/IDEAS and EconPapers have no usable API (their search URLs return a homepage to a fetcher), so don't rely on them programmatically. Merge all sources and de-dup by normalized title.

1. Curate - this is the part only you can do. Read candidates.json and:

• drop off-topic hits, duplicates, and non-economics noise (keep economics-adjacent working

papers if relevant);

• add the papers OpenAlex missed (from WebSearch / your knowledge), as records with the

same fields - fill what you can, leave unknowns blank;

• add the run's custom columns by writing an extra key onto every record (e.g.

"identification": "DiD"); any non-standard key becomes its own column automatically;

• you may overwrite full_citation with a hand-checked AEA string; otherwise the builder

constructs one from the fields. Save the curated list as papers.json.

1. Build the table.

``bash "$PY" .claude/skills/lit-review-table/build_xlsx.py papers.json -o literature_.xlsx ` Columns, in order: authors, year, title, journal, full_citation, keywords, abstract, citation_count, paper_type, oa_status, link, then any custom columns. Header is frozen + auto-filtered; link` cells are clickable.

1. (Optional) Download PDFs - only if the user asked.

``bash "$PY" .claude/skills/lit-review-table/download_papers.py papers.json --dir papers_ --email ` Tries each paper's open-access / working-paper URLs in turn; writes the PDFs plus a download_manifest.json recording, per paper, downloaded (+ file) or not available`. Re-running after adding papers renames files by position - clear the folder first (or prune to the manifest) to avoid stale duplicates.

1. (Optional) Fill detail columns from full text. Abstracts rarely state the exact model,

number of runs/iterations, or prompt. After downloading, read the PDFs and write the verified values into your records, then rebuild. ``bash "$PY" $SK/extract_pdf_text.py papers_/ --methods # method/model sentences per PDF ` Update the relevant record keys (e.g. model, nruns, prompt) and re-run buildxlsx.py`.

1. Report to the user: the xlsx path, paper count, field/year scope, and (if downloaded)

how many PDFs landed vs were unavailable.

Verified commands

All run on this machine:

• openalex_search.py "AI in hiring and recruitment" -n 8 --min-cites 30 -> 8 full records (abstracts reconstructed, OA pdf links).
• openalex_search.py "Hiring as Exploration" --by-title -> the exact NBER 2020 paper.
• search_more.py "GPT resume screening bias" -n 5 --no-s2 -> arXiv records in the OpenAlex shape.
• build_xlsx.py papers.json -o table.xlsx -> formatted sheet; AEA citations; clickable links; custom columns; provenance keys (source/fields) excluded.
• download_papers.py papers.json --dir papers -> arXiv/NBER PDFs fetched; publisher-gated URLs marked not available in the manifest. (Used at 55-paper scale: 35/55 downloaded.)
• extract_pdf_text.py papers/x.pdf --methods -> pulls model/iteration/prompt sentences from full text.

Gotchas

• Publisher PDFs often block bots. A "gold OA" Nature/Elsevier link can be a 303 redirect

to a consent page - the downloader detects the non-PDF and marks it not available rather than saving HTML. Papers that have an arXiv / NBER-open / institutional-repository copy download fine (those URLs are in pdf_candidates). For the rest, fetch manually or accept the gap; the manifest tells you which.

• Abstracts come from OpenAlex's inverted index and are reconstructed by the script; a few

papers (esp. older ones) have none -> blank cell.

• Economics filter is OpenAlex concept C162324750. It is broad but can miss adjacent

working papers; use --no-econ-filter and curate manually when the topic is cross-field.

• OpenAlex keywords can be thin/auto-generated; it falls back to top concepts. Tidy them

during curation if the user cares about keyword quality.

• Semantic Scholar rate-limits hard (HTTP 429) without a key - search_more.py retries with

backoff but still often returns partial; run it again or split into fewer queries.

• RePEc / IDEAS / EconPapers have no usable search API - their search URLs serve a homepage

to a fetcher. Use WebSearch for econ working-paper series instead, then fetch each PDF.

• --by-title (filter=title.search) beats the relevance search for pulling a specific

known paper; the plain search ranks broadly and often misses the exact one.

• Stale download files: filenames are numbered by position, so re-running after re-sorting

the list leaves duplicates. Clear the papers/ dir (or prune to the manifest) before a re-run.

• Curated CS/preprint records carry a source/fields key for provenance; build_xlsx.py

excludes those from the table automatically (don't promote them to columns).

• Git Bash path mangling: pass relative output filenames (-o candidates.json), not

/tmp/..., or MSYS rewrites the path. Inside python -c, build paths with os.path.join, not raw backslash strings (they break the shell quote).

• No API key needed (OpenAlex, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Unpaywall are free; Unpaywall just

wants an email).

Files

• openalex_search.py - topic -> candidate records (JSON); --by-title for a specific paper.
• search_more.py - arXiv + Semantic Scholar search (preprints/SSRN/NBER), same record shape.
• build_xlsx.py - curated records (JSON) -> formatted .xlsx (AEA citations, custom columns).
• download_papers.py - optional PDF downloads + manifest.
• extract_pdf_text.py - read downloaded PDFs (full text / --methods) to fill detail columns.

Source & license

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

• Author: dariia-m
• Source: dariia-m/myclaude_skills
• License: MIT

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