Academic Brief
Summarises 3-5 academic papers on a single topic into a plain-English brief listing the core claim, method and limitations of each paper.
Entry verified April 21, 2026
The short answer
For non-academics writing on technical topics — ML, biotech, economics — where "studies show" hand-waving is the usual failure mode. Turns dense papers into a defensible set of claims you can cite in the post, with each paper's limitations explicit rather than buried.
When to use it
Tech and science content. Newsletter pieces that reference research. Any draft where the alternative is vague appeals to unnamed studies.
Setup
- 1
Save the file as ~/.claude/agents/academic-brief.md.
- 2
Needs web fetch (for open-access papers) and PDF parsing tools available to the agent.
- 3
Feed DOIs or arXiv links; the agent returns one paragraph per paper: claim, method, limitation.
- 4
Closed-access papers need manual download before the agent can read them.
Example
You: /academic-brief — 3 papers on prompt chain-of-thought. [URLs] Claude: Paper 1: claim + method + limitation. Paper 2: same. Paper 3: contrarian — worth citing.
Source & attribution
- Author
- Bryan Collins
- Licence
- MIT
- Type
- Original
Original pattern published under MIT — attribution preserved by convention, not licence requirement.
Caveats
Closed-access papers need manual download. LLM summarisation ≠ expert review — pair with real domain knowledge for stakes-worthy claims.
56 skills across 10 categories, all licence-verified.