Google Scholar CLI (scholar) Skill

Google Scholar CLI (scholar)

Search Google Scholar for academic papers via the scholar command-line tool.

Requires: scholar on PATH (~/.local/bin/scholar → ~/projects/google-scholar-cli/scholar)

Check: command -v scholar || echo "MISSING: scholar CLI not installed"

IRON LAW: No Hallucinated Metadata

NEVER fabricate paper titles, authors, journals, years, or abstracts from memory.

When the user asks about a specific paper or needs citation details:

User mentions a paper
    ↓
Do you have the exact metadata from a scholar command in this session?
    ↓
YES → Use that data
NO  → Run scholar search/lookup --bibtex FIRST, then report

Rationalization Table

| Excuse | Reality | Do Instead | |--------|---------|------------| | "I know this famous paper" | Training data has wrong years, missing authors, garbled titles | Run scholar lookup "title" --bibtex | | "I'll fill in details later" | You won't — the hallucinated version sticks | Get BibTeX first, present after | | "It's a well-known paper" | Even well-known papers have co-authors you'll forget | Let Google Scholar provide the metadata | | "The user just wants a quick answer" | A wrong answer is worse than a 2-second lookup | --bibtex adds seconds, not minutes |

Red Flags — STOP If You Catch Yourself:

About to type a paper title from memory → STOP. Run scholar lookup.
About to list authors without a source → STOP. Run --bibtex.
Saying "published in" without verification → STOP. Check the BibTeX.
Writing an abstract from memory → STOP. BibTeX includes the abstract.

Authentication

Before first use, authenticate by extracting cookies from an active Chrome session:

# Chrome must be running with remote debugging enabled
scholar auth --port 9222

Cookies are stored in ~/.google-scholar/cookies (mode 0600).

Core Commands

Scholar Labs Search (AI-Enhanced)

Natural language search using Google Scholar Labs API:

# One-shot search
scholar search "what are the key papers on attention mechanisms"

# JSON output for parsing
scholar search "corporate disclosure and information asymmetry" --json

# With BibTeX citations (includes abstracts)
scholar search "attention is all you need" --bibtex

# Download PDFs for results with full-text links
scholar search "transformer architectures" --download

# Interactive multi-turn mode (follow-up questions)
scholar search --interactive

Traditional Keyword Search

Standard Google Scholar full-text search:

# Keyword search
scholar lookup "machine learning transformers"

# Author search
scholar lookup "author:shleifer disclosure" --json

# With BibTeX
scholar lookup "asset pricing" --bibtex

# With PDF download
scholar lookup "deep learning" --download

Cite (BibTeX by Cluster ID)

Fetch BibTeX directly when you already have a cluster ID from search results:

# Single paper
scholar cite 5Gohgn6QFikJ

# Multiple papers, JSON output
scholar cite 5Gohgn6QFikJ 8409835334886051453 --json

Download (Single PDF)

Note: --download works for open-access PDFs (arXiv, NBER, etc.) but is unreliable for papers behind library link resolvers (institutional access). For paywalled papers, return the URL and let the user download manually.

scholar download "https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.03762" --output attention.pdf

Quick Reference

| Need | Command | |------|---------| | Natural language question | scholar search "question" | | Keyword/author search | scholar lookup "keywords" | | BibTeX citations | Add --bibtex to search/lookup | | BibTeX by cluster ID | scholar cite <clusterId> | | Download PDFs | Add --download to search/lookup | | Download single PDF | scholar download "url" --output file.pdf | | JSON output | Add --json to any command | | Interactive follow-ups | scholar search --interactive | | Re-authenticate | scholar auth |

Decision Tree: Which Command?

Do you have a cluster ID already?
  YES → scholar cite <clusterId>
  NO  ↓
Do you have a natural language research question?
  YES → scholar search "question"
  NO  ↓
Do you need keyword-exact or author-specific results?
  YES → scholar lookup "author:name keyword"
  NO  ↓
Do you want follow-up refinement?
  YES → scholar search --interactive

When to add flags:

Need citation metadata (authors, journal, year, abstract)?
  YES → Add --bibtex
Need to download the PDF (open-access only)?
  YES → Add --download (unreliable for paywalled papers — return the URL instead)
Need machine-readable output?
  YES → Add --json

Verified Paper Information Workflow

When presenting paper information to the user, follow this workflow:

1. Run scholar search/lookup with --bibtex
2. Parse BibTeX fields for authoritative metadata:
   - title, author, journal/booktitle, year, abstract
3. Present ONLY the fields returned by BibTeX
4. If BibTeX is missing a field, say "not available" — do NOT fill from memory

BibTeX includes abstracts: The --bibtex flag injects the snippet as an abstract field in the BibTeX entry. Use this instead of generating abstracts.

Output Format

Table output (default): Columns for #, Title, Authors, Year, Cited, Journal, followed by snippets and URLs.

JSON output (--json): Array of ScholarResult objects:

{
  "title": "Paper Title",
  "authors": "Author A, Author B",
  "journal": "Journal Name",
  "year": "2024",
  "citations": 150,
  "snippet": "Abstract excerpt...",
  "url": "https://...",
  "pdfUrl": "https://... or null",
  "clusterId": "12345",
  "position": 1
}

BibTeX output (--bibtex): Standard BibTeX entries with abstract field:

@article{key,
  title={Paper Title},
  author={Author, A and Author, B},
  journal={Journal Name},
  year={2024},
  abstract={Abstract text from Google Scholar snippet...}
}

Domain Knowledge Integration

When searching Google Scholar, ALWAYS consult the domain knowledge file first:

File: domain-knowledge.local.md (relative to this skill's base directory)

This file contains the user's curated list of trusted journals, authors, and research groups. Use it to:

Prioritize results from known-good journals and authors
Flag unfamiliar sources - if a result is from an unknown journal, note it
Suggest related searches - use known authors to refine queries
Assess quality - weight results higher when they appear in trusted venues

How to Use Domain Knowledge

User asks: "find papers on corporate disclosure"
    ↓
1. Read domain-knowledge.local.md
2. Run scholar search/lookup
3. Cross-reference results against trusted journals/authors
4. Present results with quality signals:
   - ★ = from trusted journal or by trusted author
   - Results from unknown sources shown without star

Operational Rules

No hallucinated metadata — NEVER cite title/author/journal/year/abstract from memory. Use --bibtex or scholar cite to get verified data.
Scholar is for discovery — Use it to find new papers, not to read them
Always use --json when results will be processed programmatically
Use --bibtex when presenting papers — It provides verified author, journal, year, and abstract fields
Cross-reference domain knowledge — Always check trusted journals/authors
Auth required — If search fails with auth errors, re-run scholar auth
Rate limits — Google Scholar may rate-limit; space out rapid queries

Agent Skills: Google Scholar CLI (scholar)

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