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research-acquire

Research
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Download research papers and extract metadata

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/jmagly/aiwg/blob/HEAD/agentic/code/frameworks/research-complete/skills/research-acquire/SKILL.md

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Research Acquire Command

Download research papers from public repositories and extract metadata.

Instructions

When invoked, perform automated paper acquisition:

  1. Identify Source

    • Parse DOI, arXiv ID, or URL
    • Determine paper hosting location
    • Check if paper already exists in .aiwg/research/sources/

  2. Download Paper

    • Attempt direct PDF download from source
    • Try fallback sources (arXiv mirror, Unpaywall, PMC)
    • Save to .aiwg/research/sources/[ref-id].pdf
    • Verify download integrity (file size, PDF structure)

  3. Extract Metadata

    • Parse PDF metadata (title, authors, year)
    • Query CrossRef/Semantic Scholar for enhanced metadata
    • Extract abstract, keywords, citation count
    • Determine source type (journal, conference, preprint)

  4. Generate Frontmatter

    • Create YAML frontmatter per @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/schemas/research/frontmatter-schema.yaml
    • Assign REF-XXX identifier
    • Calculate PDF checksum (SHA-256)
    • Set initial GRADE baseline from source type

  5. Extract Full Text (default, unless --no-extract-text)

    • Extract full text from PDF to .aiwg/research/sources/text/REF-XXX.txt
    • This text is the primary input for downstream analysis — analysis agents must read this file, not just metadata or abstract
    • If extraction fails (scanned PDF, encrypted): log warning, set full_text_available: false in frontmatter

  6. Create Finding Document

    • Generate .aiwg/research/findings/REF-XXX-[slug].md from template
    • Populate frontmatter with extracted metadata
    • Add placeholder sections for key findings
    • Update fixity manifest

  7. Post-Acquisition

    • Log acquisition in .aiwg/research/acquisition-log.yaml
    • Update corpus index
    • Suggest next steps (quality assessment, documentation)

Arguments

  • [identifier] - DOI, arXiv ID, or URL (required)
  • --output [path] - Custom output location (default: auto-generate)
  • --ref-id [REF-XXX] - Specific REF-XXX identifier (default: auto-assign)
  • --extract-text - Extract full text to .txt file for analysis (default: enabled; use --no-extract-text to skip)
  • --no-metadata - Skip metadata enrichment
  • --force - Re-download even if paper exists

Examples

# Acquire by DOI
/research-acquire 10.48550/arXiv.2308.08155

# Acquire by arXiv ID
/research-acquire arXiv:2308.08155

# Acquire with custom identifier
/research-acquire https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.08155.pdf --ref-id REF-022

# Acquire with full text extraction
/research-acquire 10.1145/3377811.3380330 --extract-text

Expected Output

Acquiring Paper: 10.48550/arXiv.2308.08155
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Step 1: Resolving identifier
  ✓ DOI resolved to arXiv:2308.08155
  ✓ Paper not found in corpus

Step 2: Downloading PDF
  ✓ Downloaded from arxiv.org (2.4 MB)
  ✓ Saved to .aiwg/research/sources/REF-022.pdf
  ✓ Checksum: a1b2c3d4e5f6...

Step 3: Extracting metadata
  ✓ Title: AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications...
  ✓ Authors: Wu, Q., Bansal, G., Zhang, J., et al. (9 authors)
  ✓ Year: 2023
  ✓ Source: arXiv preprint
  ✓ Citations: 234 (as of 2026-02-03)

Step 4: Creating finding document
  ✓ Generated .aiwg/research/findings/REF-022-autogen.md
  ✓ Frontmatter populated
  ✓ Template sections added

Step 5: Updating corpus
  ✓ Added to fixity manifest
  ✓ Updated INDEX.md
  ✓ Logged acquisition

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Acquisition complete!

REF-ID: REF-022
Title: AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications...
File: .aiwg/research/sources/REF-022.pdf
Finding: .aiwg/research/findings/REF-022-autogen.md

Next Steps:
1. /research-quality REF-022 - Assess evidence quality
2. /research-document REF-022 - Create detailed summary
3. /research-cite REF-022 - Generate citation

Provenance Tracking

All acquisitions create provenance records:

# .aiwg/research/provenance/records/REF-022-acquisition.yaml
entity:
  id: "urn:aiwg:artifact:.aiwg/research/sources/REF-022.pdf"
  type: "research_paper"

activity:
  id: "urn:aiwg:activity:acquisition:REF-022:001"
  type: "acquisition"
  started_at: "2026-02-03T12:00:00Z"
  ended_at: "2026-02-03T12:00:15Z"

agent:
  id: "urn:aiwg:agent:research-acquisition-agent"
  type: "aiwg_agent"

source:
  identifier: "10.48550/arXiv.2308.08155"
  url: "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.08155.pdf"

References

  • @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/research-complete/agents/research-acquisition-agent.md - Acquisition Agent
  • @$AIWG_ROOT/src/research/services/acquisition-service.ts - Download implementation
  • @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/schemas/research/frontmatter-schema.yaml - Metadata format
  • @.aiwg/research/fixity-manifest.json - Checksum tracking
  • @$AIWG_ROOT/agentic/code/frameworks/sdlc-complete/rules/provenance-tracking.md - Provenance requirements

Storage Routing (#934, #968)

This skill's persistence flows through resolveStorage('research'). On the default fs backend the research corpus lives at .aiwg/research/. Heavy artifacts (papers, archived sources) can move to a secondary drive by setting roots.research in .aiwg/storage.config (one of the headline #934 use cases).

aiwg research-store path                            # resolved root
aiwg research-store list --prefix sources/
aiwg research-store get sources/paper-123.md