| name | vista |
| description | This skill should be used when the user asks about research directions, open problems, future work, or follow-up research from the academic literature. Trigger phrases include "open problems in X", "what's next for Y", "future work for paper Z", "research directions on T", "salient follow-up research", "what should I work on next in", "find me follow-up research unrelated to my prior work", "broad survey of W", "neglected directions in V". Routes the request to the right Vista MCP tool, reads back the structured paper sections, and synthesizes research directions in the conversation. |
Vista
Vista surfaces salient research directions by reading the Future Work,
Limitations, Discussion, and Conclusion sections of highly-cited
papers. The MCP server does the mechanical work (OpenAlex search, PDF fetch,
section extraction, caching). This skill tells you when to call which MCP tool
and how to synthesize the structured payload it returns.
Core principle
The MCP tools are mechanical. They return raw section text plus metadata.
You (Claude in this conversation) read the sections and produce the synthesis:
ranking, pattern detection, novelty assessment, cross-paper themes. Do not
expect the MCP to "give you the answer"; it gives you the inputs.
When to invoke which tool
Read the user's question carefully and route:
| User intent | Tool | Notes |
|---|
| "Open problems / future work / research directions in a topic" | topic_followups(topic, max_papers=8, year_min=2020, min_citations=30) | Most common. Recent, highly-cited, arXiv-available. |
| "What does paper / arXiv:1234.5678 / DOI X say about future work?" | paper_followups(identifier) | Single-paper deep-dive. Identifier can be DOI, arXiv id, OpenAlex id, or title. |
| "Older / classical / under-explored / neglected directions in X" | find_seminal(topic, year_max=2019, min_citations=1000) | Legacy track. The "papers everyone cites but nobody followed up on." |
| "Broad / cross-field / serendipitous search; find directions outside my prior work" | broad_followups(query, fields=None, max_papers=12) | Exploratory; looser thresholds; spans fields. |
| "Search the local catalog of distilled directions" | search_directions(query, ...) | Use after a build run. Searches what the user has already mined. |
| "List interesting / open / started directions" | list_directions(...) | Curation/review. |
| "Mark this direction as interesting" | mark_direction(direction_id, status, notes) | User curation. |
| "Save these directions for paper X" | submit_directions(paper_id, directions) | After you've synthesized directions, persist them so future runs can search them. |
| "What papers / directions / fields are in the store?" | status() or run_sql(...) | Inspection. |
If unsure: prefer topic_followups for topic questions and paper_followups
for paper questions. If the user wants breadth or surprise, use
broad_followups. If the request mentions classical, neglected, or
"never-followed-up", use find_seminal.
Synthesis pattern after a tool call
Each on-demand tool returns:
{
"topic": "diffusion models",
"params": { ... },
"papers": [
{
"paper_id": "Wxxxxxxx",
"title": "...",
"authors": [...],
"year": 2023,
"venue": "...",
"cited_by_count": 1234,
"doi": "...", "arxiv_id": "...", "arxiv_url": "...", "doi_url": "...",
"abstract": "...",
"sections": [
{"type": "future_work", "heading": "Future Work", "content": "...", "char_count": ...},
{"type": "limitations", "heading": "Limitations", "content": "...", "char_count": ...},
{"type": "discussion", "heading": "Discussion", "content": "...", "char_count": ...},
{"type": "conclusion", "heading": "Conclusion", "content": "...", "char_count": ...}
]
},
...
],
"paper_count": 8
}
For each paper:
- Read the
future_work section if present, else limitations, else
discussion/conclusion (the latter often contain future-work prose
without a separate heading).
- Pull out concrete, actionable directions. Reject vague aspirations
("more experiments", "scale up").
- For each, capture: a one-sentence direction, a one-line rationale grounded
in the section text, a short verbatim quote (substring of the section), and
tags (
["topic-keyword", "method-keyword"]).
- Estimate
feasibility and novelty (low/medium/high) based on the paper's
stated limits.
Then synthesize across papers:
- Consensus directions: themes that appear across ≥2 papers.
- Frontier directions: novel, mentioned by one paper, well-supported.
- Conspicuous absences: areas the user might expect to be flagged but
aren't (use sparingly; it's interpretive).
- Contradictions: papers disagreeing on what to do next.
Present the synthesis with explicit citations to paper title and year, and
include the arXiv or DOI URL so the user can drill in.
If the user wants the synthesized directions persisted, call
submit_directions(paper_id, directions) per paper. Otherwise leave the
catalog alone, since the conversation answer is enough.
Defaults to nudge
- For ML/AI topics,
topic_followups defaults are usually fine.
- For statistics, drop
min_citations to ~20 and set require_arxiv=False
(many top stats papers are not on arXiv).
- For ransomware / security, set
require_arxiv=False and lean on
min_citations=15. USENIX/NDSS papers are often OA but not arXiv.
Output style
Default to a concise structured response: synthesis first, then a "directions
table" with paper, year, citation count, direction one-liner, and a link.
Offer to drill into any direction. Do not paste raw section text back at the
user unless they ask for it.
Bulk / pipeline workflows
If the user asks to build a corpus rather than ask an in-conversation
question (e.g., "set up a recurring sweep across all four fields"), use the
bulk tools (discover, extract_pending, render_markdown) or hand them
back to the CLI: vista pipeline --fields ml,ai,stats,ransomware --per-field 25.
Additional resources
references/tool-routing.md: extended decision examples for picking the
right MCP tool from ambiguous user phrasings.references/output-shape.md: full JSON schema for each tool's response.
