Create Academic Research

Scaffold a four-entity academic research project with one command: SOTA → survey → contributions → papers, one root bibliography, MCP-verified citations, agent skills included.

npm create academic-research@latest my-project

What it creates

my-project/
├── README.md  AGENTS.md  CLAUDE.md
├── references.bib       # THE single bibliography (1:1:1 with the SOTA)
├── .mcp.json            # arxiv + semantic-scholar + dblp always on
├── pyproject.toml       # uv workspace: one venv for all contributions
├── Makefile             # make check | pdfs | survey | contribution | paper
├── scripts/check.py     # structure validator
├── sota/                # papers/<citekey>/{paper.pdf,synthesis.md,metadata.yaml} + index + queue
├── survey/              # survey.tex + committed survey.pdf + coverage.md
├── contributions/       # self-contained badge-compliant units (_template/)
└── papers/              # one folder per venue submission (_template/)

The wizard asks for a title, a one-line topic, optional MCP servers (openalex pre-checked; zotero and overleaf opt-in), and installs the companion academic-research-skills project-locally. Flags: --yes, --no-install-skills, --no-git.

The model

• SOTA: digesting a paper atomically produces its folder (PDF + standard synthesis + metadata with citation graph), its bib entry, and its index row. A citation exists only if a scholarly MCP lookup produced it — provenance is recorded per paper and enforced by make check.
• Survey: one single-column LaTeX document that digests every synthesis, groups the SOTA, and ends with gaps & research directions. coverage.md makes updates diff-driven when the SOTA changes.
• Contributions: each one self-contained and badge-general compliant, with a report detailed enough to write papers from.
• Papers: per-venue folders with framing, manuscript on the venue template, packaged artifacts, correspondence, and immutable submission archives.

Generated projects need: git, make, python3 (≥3.11), latexmk, and uv (uvx runs the MCP servers). No Node at runtime (except the optional openalex server).

Develop this package

npm install
npm run typecheck
npm test
npm pack --dry-run

The test suite needs python3 ≥ 3.11 on PATH (one test validates generated TOML with tomllib); CI uses 3.12.

Release

Tag-driven. Bump package.json, commit, tag vX.Y.Z, push the tag; the release workflow validates, publishes to npm, and creates a GitHub release.