Use this skill to turn a paper into research-ready notes instead of a vague summary. Focus on the research question, method, experimental design, evidence quality, limitations, and what the user can reuse in their own work.

Use the local document skills when the source is a file:

For PDFs, use the existing document-skills/pdf workflow to extract text and tables as needed.
For PPTX or DOCX supplements, use the sibling pptx or docx skills when the paper package includes slides, appendices, or reviews in those formats.

When To Use

Use this skill when the user asks for any of the following:

Read and explain a paper PDF
Summarize a paper for study, literature tracking, or group meeting
Extract the method, model, theorem, dataset, or experiment design from a paper
Judge whether a paper is strong, weak, reproducible, or useful for a thesis/project
Compare a target paper against the user's current direction, baseline, or idea

Do not use this skill for broad multi-paper synthesis. Use literature-review for that.

Workflow

1. Identify the paper context

Establish the minimum context before analyzing:

Title
Venue, year, and version if available
Research area
User goal

If the user provides a PDF only, infer the topic from the title, abstract, introduction, and figures before going deeper.

2. Read in a research order

Read the paper in this order unless the user asks otherwise:

Title and abstract
Introduction and stated problem
Figures, tables, and captions
Method section
Experimental setup and datasets
Results and ablations
Conclusion and limitations
Related work only if needed for context

Avoid pretending every section deserves equal weight. Spend more attention on the method and evidence.

3. Extract the paper's core claims

State the following explicitly:

What problem is being solved
Why prior approaches are insufficient
What the paper claims is new
What exact mechanism or idea produces the claimed benefit
What evidence supports the claim

Distinguish between:

The authors' claim
Evidence directly shown in the paper
Your own inference

4. Evaluate method quality

For the method, explain:

Inputs and outputs
Main architecture, algorithm, or derivation
Training or optimization strategy
Assumptions and prerequisites
What is simple engineering versus what is actually novel

If equations appear central, explain them in plain language first. Only reproduce notation when it helps comprehension.

5. Evaluate experiment quality

Check these points explicitly:

Datasets and benchmarks are appropriate
Baselines are strong and current enough
Metrics match the task
Ablations isolate the claimed contribution
Improvements are practically meaningful, not only statistically present
Reproducibility signals exist

Call out missing evidence rather than smoothing over it.

6. Translate to the user's research context

Always connect the paper to likely downstream use:

What idea is reusable
What part is hard to reproduce
What assumptions may fail in another domain
What would be worth implementing first
Whether the paper is a core reference, supporting reference, or probably skippable

Output Format

Default to this structure unless the user asks for something else:

# Paper Review

## Citation
- Title:
- Authors:
- Venue / Year:
- Link or file:

## One-Sentence Take
- 

## Problem
- 

## Main Contribution
- 

## Method
- 

## Experimental Evidence
- 

## Strengths
- 

## Weaknesses / Threats to Validity
- 

## Reproducibility Notes
- 

## What To Reuse
- 

## Recommendation
- Read closely / cite / implement / skip

Short-Form Variant

If the user asks for a quick read, compress to:

one-sentence contribution
three key ideas
two main limitations
one action recommendation

Guardrails

Do not confuse the abstract's promises with demonstrated evidence.
Do not call a paper "state of the art" unless the paper clearly supports that claim.
Do not over-explain related work if the user's goal is implementation or decision-making.
Do not hide uncertainty. If the PDF extraction is messy or equations are unreadable, say so.
Do not produce marketing language. Produce research notes.