| name | problem-driven-literature-review |
| description | Write, diagnose, revise, or audit literature review, related work, introduction background, research-gap, and reference-selection sections using a problem-driven S-R-L-H-G-M-C-V protocol. Use for claim-first citation selection, literature-route organization, hidden-assumption analysis, direct competitor coverage, structural gap synthesis, review-baseline alignment, contribution mapping, and citation integrity in technical research papers. |
Problem-Driven Literature Review
Scope
Use this skill for literature review, related work, introduction background, research-gap synthesis, reference selection, and citation-role assignment in technical research papers, organized by a problem-driven protocol rather than a method-name list.
Read references/literature_review_protocol.md for the full protocol, worksheet, paragraph templates, reference-role table, reference metadata check, quality gates, and per-contribution-type examples before drafting or auditing a full review. For a short background paragraph, the principle and protocol summary below are enough.
Use another skill when the task is primarily:
- novelty risk, dangerous baselines, or whether the idea is defensible before writing: use
idea-novelty-auditor (if available);
- manuscript storyline, section structure, contribution framing, or experiment-to-claim redesign: use
paper-argument-reconstructor (if available);
- TeX-safe language polishing of the review text: use
paper-polisher (if available).
Verification Mode
This skill has two modes. By default it writes or revises the review as described above. When the input is a related-work or background section another tool or skill has already drafted, switch to verification mode instead of regenerating:
- do not overwrite the other tool's wording;
- check it against this skill's rules: citation integrity, reference metadata quality, direct-competitor coverage, negative-claim hygiene, and whether the named structural gap is actually supported;
- report only the deviations and their locations; fix one in place only if it breaks a hard rule.
The suite's value is faithful, bounded output, not a competing rewrite. Verify rather than replace what a stronger generator already produced.
One-Sentence Principle
A literature review is not a list of what other people did. It should prove why the target paper is necessary:
S requires R.
Literature L solves parts of R under H.
H breaks under S, producing gap G.
We propose C to close G and validate it by V.
Core Protocol: S-R-L-H-G-M-C-V
| Step | Meaning | Question to answer |
|---|
| S | Scenario | What target task, environment, and constraints define the paper? |
| R | Requirements | What must a credible solution satisfy? |
| L | Literature lines | Which functional routes does prior work follow? |
| H | Hidden assumptions | What must be true for each route to work well? |
| G | Structural gap | Why do existing routes fail to jointly satisfy R? |
| M | Missing object | What concrete object (representation, mechanism, interface, theory, metric, benchmark, framework) is missing? |
| C | Contributions | Which gap component does each contribution address? |
| V | Validation | Which experiment, theorem, ablation, or benchmark validates each claim? |
G and M are distinct: G is the capability that is jointly missing; M is the concrete object that supplies it. Name M explicitly; an unnamed M is the most common review failure.
Workflow
- Infer the venue, paper type, contribution type, audience, review length, and available validation; ask at most one clarifying question, and only if it would change the structure.
- Fill the minimum worksheet (S-R-L-H-G-M-C-V) before writing prose.
- Organize literature by function and hidden assumptions, not by method name.
- Compress limitations into one structural gap G, and name the missing object M.
- Map each contribution C to a gap component, and each claim to a validation V.
- Select references claim-first: write the claim, then find the reference, and give every reference a role.
- If BibTeX entries are created, pasted from Google Scholar, or copied from another tool, run
scripts/check_references.py on the .bib content before treating the entries as manuscript-ready. Use --online when DOI/Crossref verification is possible, and --strict when warnings should block final use.
- Run the quality gates: direct-competitor coverage, negative-claim hygiene, review-experiment alignment, citation integrity, and reference metadata integrity.
Full tables, paragraph templates, the reference-role taxonomy, retrieval flow, reference metadata check, and per-contribution-type examples are in references/literature_review_protocol.md.
Output
- For a full Related Work section: the review prose, plus the filled S-R-L-H-G-M-C-V worksheet and the reference-role list.
- For a diagnosis: the structural-gap sentence, the named missing object M, any uncovered direct competitors, and citation-integrity issues, then a revised structure.
Keep claims bounded: do not invent references, and do not use nobody has done this phrasing. Do not trust Google Scholar BibTeX as authoritative metadata; treat it as a draft export that must be checked against DOI, publisher, Crossref, DBLP, PubMed, arXiv, or the target journal style as appropriate. If recent-literature accuracy matters, verify with a search (e.g. WebSearch) or ask the user for the relevant reference set instead of asserting priority.
