# Systematic Literature Review

Synthesizes many academic papers into a review with citations in APA, IEEE or BibTeX.

- Repository: https://github.com/bytedance/deer-flow (84840 stars)
- Category: Documents
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-11-01
- Runs scripts: yes, review before use

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add bytedance/deer-flow --skill systematic-literature-review -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add bytedance/deer-flow --skill systematic-literature-review -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add bytedance/deer-flow --skill systematic-literature-review -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add bytedance/deer-flow --skill systematic-literature-review -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

Use this skill when the user wants a systematic literature review, survey, or synthesis across multiple academic papers on a topic. Also covers annotated bibliographies and cross-paper comparisons. Searches arXiv and outputs reports in APA, IEEE, or BibTeX format. Not for single-paper tasks, use academic-paper-review for reviewing one paper.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Systematic Literature Review Skill

## Overview

This skill produces a structured **systematic literature review (SLR)** across multiple academic papers on a research topic. Given a topic query, it searches arXiv, extracts structured metadata (research question, methodology, key findings, limitations) from each paper in parallel, synthesizes themes across the full set, and emits a final report with consistent citations.

**Distinct from `academic-paper-review`:** that skill does deep peer review of a single paper. This skill does breadth-first synthesis across many papers. If the user hands you one paper URL and asks "review this paper", route to `academic-paper-review` instead.

## When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when the user wants any of the following:

- A literature survey on a topic ("survey transformer attention variants", "review the literature on diffusion models")
- A synthesis across multiple papers ("what do recent papers say about X", "compare methodologies across papers on Y")
- A systematic review with consistent citation format ("do an SLR on Z in APA format")
- An annotated bibliography on a topic
- An overview of research trends in a field over a time window

Do **not** use this skill when:

- The user provides exactly one paper and asks to review it (use `academic-paper-review`)
- The user asks a factual question that does not require synthesizing multiple sources (answer directly)
- The user wants general web research without academic rigor (use standard web search)

## Workflow

The workflow has five phases. Follow them in order.

### Phase 1: Plan

Before doing any retrieval, confirm the following with the user. If any of these are unclear, ask **one** clarifying question that covers the missing pieces. Do not ask one question at a time.

The rest: https://github.com/bytedance/deer-flow/blob/HEAD/skills/public/systematic-literature-review/SKILL.md