Missing Lit

Missing Literature Finder

When to Use

Invoke periodically (every 4–6 weeks) or when starting a new paper chapter. Finds structural gaps in the literature collection.

Important: Note Location

Literature notes live in literature/zotero-notes/ in the project directory. Each note is named @{citekey}.md with structured YAML frontmatter. See .claude/rules/literature-notes.md for the exact format.

Steps

1. Read all @*.md notes in literature/zotero-notes/

• Each note has YAML frontmatter with: citekey, paper_type, tags, authors, year, journal
• Tags use lowercase kebab-case: forced-migration, DiD, Germany, etc.
• Paper types: empirical, theoretical, review, methodological, report, mixed

1. Extract dimensions from frontmatter and note content:

• Topics (from tags)
• Methods (from tags — e.g., DiD, IV, RDD)
• Geographies (from tags — e.g., Germany, Turkey)
• Datasets (from tags and note body)
• Time periods (from note body)
• Cited authors (from authors field)

1. Identify structural gaps:

• Methods used in related fields but not yet applied to the author's topic
• Geographic regions with relevant phenomena but no empirical work in the collection
• Datasets mentioned in papers but not yet exploited
• Recent working papers (NBER, IZA, CEPR, SSRN) not in the collection
• Seminal papers from the domain profile not yet in notes
• Paper types underrepresented (e.g., all empirical, no methodological)

1. Search for recent papers in:

• Top-5 journals + field journals (from journal-profiles.md)
• NBER working papers
• IZA discussion papers
• CEPR discussion papers
• SSRN

1. Append findings to literature/missing-lit.md with:

• Date stamp
• Paper title, authors, year, source
• Relevance score (1–5)
• Why it matters for the dissertation
• Which paper(s) it's most relevant to

1. Flag any paper that could directly challenge or strengthen the author's identification strategy

Output Format

Prepend new entries to literature/missing-lit.md (append-only file):

## YYYY-MM-DD — Missing Literature Scan

### Scanned
- Notes folder: {output_folder from config}
- Total notes read: {N}
- Paper types: {N} empirical, {N} theoretical, {N} review, {N} methodological
- Geographies covered: {list}
- Methods covered: {list}

### High Priority
- **Author (Year)** "Title" — *Journal*
  Relevance: 5/5. [Why it matters]. Relevant to Paper [N].

### Medium Priority
- ...

### Gaps Identified
[Summary of structural gaps found in this scan]

Important

• Follow the deprecation protocol for append-only files
• Never remove existing entries
• If an entry was wrong, add a correction entry rather than editing
• Respect the existing YAML frontmatter format — do not propose changes to how notes are structured

Source & license

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

• Author: saptarsibhowmick
• Source: saptarsibhowmick/claude-workflow-for-econ-phd
• License: MIT

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