Alphaxiv paper lookup

Skill christyjacob4/claude-tricks/skills/alphaxiv-paper-lookup

A collection of skills that teach Claude Code new tricks

Install

npx -y skills add christyjacob4/claude-tricks --skill alphaxiv-paper-lookup

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Look up any arxiv paper on alphaxiv.org to get a structured AI-generated overview. This is faster and more reliable than trying to read a raw PDF.

SKILL.md

2.3 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

AlphaXiv Paper Lookup

Look up any arxiv paper on alphaxiv.org to get a structured AI-generated overview. This is faster and more reliable than trying to read a raw PDF.

When to Use

User shares an arxiv URL (e.g. arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345)
User mentions a paper ID (e.g. 2401.12345)
User asks you to explain, summarize, or analyze a research paper
User shares an alphaxiv URL (e.g. alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.12345)

Workflow

Step 1: Extract the paper ID

Parse the paper ID from whatever the user provides:

Input	Paper ID
`https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345`	`2401.12345`
`https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.12345`	`2401.12345`
`https://alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.12345`	`2401.12345`
`2401.12345v2`	`2401.12345v2`
`2401.12345`	`2401.12345`

Step 2: Fetch the machine-readable report

curl -s "https://alphaxiv.org/overview/{PAPER_ID}.md"

This returns the intermediate machine-readable report — a structured, detailed analysis of the paper optimized for LLM consumption. One call, plain markdown, no JSON parsing.

If this returns 404, the report hasn't been generated for this paper yet.

Step 3: If you need more detail, fetch the full paper text

If the report doesn't contain the specific information the user is asking about (e.g. a particular equation, table, or section), fetch the full paper text:

curl -s "https://alphaxiv.org/abs/{PAPER_ID}.md"

This returns the full extracted text of the paper as markdown. Only use this as a fallback — the report is usually sufficient.

If this returns 404, the full text hasn't been processed yet. As a last resort, direct the user to the PDF at https://arxiv.org/pdf/{PAPER_ID}.

Error Handling

404 on Step 2: Report not generated for this paper.
404 on Step 3: Full text not yet extracted for this paper.

Notes

No authentication required — these are public endpoints.