Ellie f82b738db7 Add paper CLI: download academic papers by DOI and convert to markdown

Downloads PDFs from LibGen (primary) or Anna's Archive API (fallback),
converts to markdown via marker_single, and prints to stdout. Includes
XDG-compliant caching, nix flake with marker-pdf packaging, and a
Claude Code skill for paper-reader integration.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-02-19 22:54:30 -08:00

1.9 KiB

Raw Blame History

name	description
paper-reader	Fetch and read academic papers by DOI. Use when (1) the user mentions a DOI (e.g., 10.1038/nature12373), asks to read/summarize/analyze a research paper, or references a paper they want to work with, or (2) Claude needs to consult a specific paper as part of research — e.g., a web search returns a relevant DOI, or a cited paper would help answer the user's question. Converts PDFs to markdown so the paper content can be read and discussed.

name

description

paper-reader

Fetch and read academic papers by DOI. Use when (1) the user mentions a DOI (e.g., 10.1038/nature12373), asks to read/summarize/analyze a research paper, or references a paper they want to work with, or (2) Claude needs to consult a specific paper as part of research — e.g., a web search returns a relevant DOI, or a cited paper would help answer the user's question. Converts PDFs to markdown so the paper content can be read and discussed.

Paper Reader

Fetch academic papers by DOI using the paper CLI, which downloads PDFs and converts them to markdown via marker_single.

Usage

# Fetch a paper and save to a temp file, then read it
paper <DOI> > /tmp/paper.md

# Bypass cache to re-download
paper --no-cache <DOI> > /tmp/paper.md

Output goes to stdout (markdown). Progress/status goes to stderr. DOIs can be passed with or without the https://doi.org/ prefix.

Workflow

Extract the DOI from the user's message (look for patterns like 10.xxxx/...)
Run paper <DOI> > /tmp/paper-<sanitized-doi>.md via Bash
Read the resulting markdown file
Respond to what the user asked (summarize, explain, answer questions, etc.)

Caching

Results are cached at ~/.cache/paper/<DOI>.md. Subsequent requests for the same DOI return instantly. Use --no-cache only when the user explicitly wants a fresh conversion.

Download Sources

The tool tries LibGen first (free, no authentication), then falls back to Anna's Archive fast download API if ANNAS_ARCHIVE_KEY is set.

Errors

"marker_single not found": The marker_single Python tool is not installed. Run pip install marker-pdf or use the nix devshell in ~/proj/paper.
"no results found on LibGen": The DOI may not be in LibGen's collection. Verify the DOI is correct.
"all download sources failed": Neither LibGen nor Anna's Archive had the paper. The user may need to find it manually.

1.9 KiB Raw Blame History