prior

name	prior
description	Assess the state of the art on a research question, grounded in primary literature. Use when the user asks "has this been done?", "what's the evidence on X?", "find the contradictions in the literature on X", or wants a cited, honest answer (including an honest "no") instead of an ungrounded summary. Builds a queryable atlas of claims from OpenAlex + arXiv and reasons over it.

Prior — literature-assessment skill

Prior turns primary literature into a queryable atlas of claims and answers questions from it, with citations and an honest abstention path. You (the agent) drive it through its CLI tools — that is what makes this an agent capability rather than a one-shot prompt.

When to use

• "Has anyone shown X?" / "What's the state of the evidence on X?"
• "What are the contradictions in the literature on X?"
• The user wants a grounded, cited answer and an honest "no" when the literature doesn't support the claim — not a confident guess.

Tools (run from the repo root)

Set a backend once: export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=... or export PRIOR_LLM_BACKEND=claude-code (runs on the Claude Code login, no API key).

Step	Command	What it does
build	python -m prior.cli build "<topic>" --max-papers 15	ingest → read → map → data/atlas/atlas.json
ask	python -m prior.cli ask "<question>"	forward: supporting / contradicting / open, all cited; honest not_found
origin	python -m prior.cli origin "<concept>"	backward: trace a concept to its origin paper
contributions	python -m prior.cli contributions	each primary paper's self-declared, standalone contributions (full text)
view	python -m prior.cli view [--contributions]	render the atlas (or contributions) to an interactive HTML graph
info	python -m prior.cli info	one-line atlas summary

(If installed with pip install -e ., prior <cmd> works too.)

Workflow for "assess the state of the art on a question"

1. Pick a focused topic string from the user's question.
2. build the atlas for that topic (skip if data/atlas/atlas.json already covers it — check with info).
3. ask the user's exact question. Report the verdict, the supporting and contradicting evidence with their citations, and any open questions.
4. If the verdict is not_found, relay the honest "no": the closest work and the gap — do not fill the gap with ungrounded knowledge.
5. Offer view for an interactive graph, or origin to trace where an idea began.

Rules

• Never answer from your own parametric knowledge when Prior returns claims — ground every statement in cited claims from the atlas.
• Preserve Prior's abstention: a graceful "no" is a correct answer, not a failure.
• One build per topic is enough; the atlas is cached and reusable.