Agent skill · research science · tiangong-ai
academic-paper-download
Fetch and atomically save verified academic-paper PDFs from legal open-access sources using a DOI or exact title, with access/license provenance and an adjacent hash manifest. Use for automatic OA retrieval or for a publisher URL that must first be resolved to a DOI and may then require an explicitly selected Chrome or optional CloakBrowser user-authorized browser handoff; supports an injectable transport for embedding in research systems.
Why this skill is useful
Adds a complete executable script for fetching and verifying academic papers from multiple sources with provenance tracking, which the AI cannot generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires python3 installed locally. About 2k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-06. 7 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Academic Paper Download Produce a structurally verified PDF and adjacent provenance manifest. Require an explicit final output directory and keep automatic resolution in this order: Unpaywall, Semantic Scholar OA, arXiv, then browser handoff. Workflow 1. For a DOI or exact title, select the caller's final output directory. Never guess a research directory. Add author/year when they help disambiguate a title. 2. For a publisher URL, first resolve or confirm its DOI. Pass only that DOI to fetch.py; the CLI does not accept publisher URLs as inputs. 3. Run the downloader and accept success only when the result contains a verified file, SHA-256, size, and adjacent manifest. 4. If automatic OA sources are exhausted, or a publisher page requires login, institution access, or interaction, explicitly choose a browser backend and read references/browser-handoff.md. Prefer the current Chrome session when it already has authorized institutional access. Never silently switch backends after login failure. 5. When the user explicitly selects CloakBrowser, also read references/cloakbrowser-handoff.md. Keep it outside PaperTransport; do not use its stealth or humanize features to solve CAPTCHA, Turnstile, paywalls, security warnings, or authentication. 6. Read references/integration.md when embedding the library or injecting a provenance-recording transport. Read references/env.md for runtime configuration. CLI Resolve the installed skill directory to an absolute path. Use the path exposed by the skill loader or npx skills list --json; do not assume the current working directory is the skill directory: After installation, explicitly create the hash-locked CLI runtime and prove it with the network-free smoke test. bootstrap is the only core command that installs packages; normal commands never install or update dependencies: The runtime lives outside the installed skill directory and works for copy, symlink, and read-only installations. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills tiangong-ai/academic-paper-download