ccf-literature-searcher

CCF Literature Searcher

Invocation Controls

CCFA Handoff Mode: PARTIAL (Recommended). Follow metadata.ccf_skill_controls.handoff_question_mode and ../ccf-common/references/handoff-modes.md. Use ../ccf-common/references/routing.md to keep literature search separate from idea optimization, manuscript writing, experiment design, paper review, and rebuttal.

Load ../ccf-common/references/task-modes.md before deciding exploratory, quick, or standard mode. Use exploratory mode for early direction scouting, "看看还有没有机会", "这个方向是不是被做完了", or literature search meant to feed idea optimization rather than a final novelty verdict. Use quick mode for a narrow related-work scan or a small set of candidate citations. Use standard mode for Related Work, Introduction, mature idea novelty grounding, benchmark discovery, experiment design, or any task that will feed another CCFA module.

If the user asks for recurring watch, latest-paper monitoring, competitor tracking, "recently any similar idea", arXiv/OpenReview feed scans, or lab/project tracking, route to ccf-literature-monitor by the shared handoff mode. Use this skill for deep retrieval, closest-work clustering, related-work structure, benchmark/dataset discovery, and citation candidates.

Treat user ideas, draft text, unpublished results, and private manuscripts as private material. Load ../ccf-common/references/privacy-and-evidence.md before browsing. Search with public keywords, public titles, venue names, method names, public abstracts, or user-approved query text. Do not paste private draft sentences into a search query unless the user explicitly authorizes it.

Source-quality exclusion: do not search, cite, recommend, or include policy-excluded venues, journals, URLs, or PDFs. The shared policy includes MDPI sources in this exclusion set; record exclusions only in internal screening or the search-notes file.

Core Rule

Ground novelty and positioning using high-quality, inspectable sources. Prefer influential conferences, strong journals, official proceedings pages, archival repositories, and public paper pages. Do not invent papers, citations, venues, links, acceptance status, benchmark status, or numerical results. Separate searched evidence from inference. Literature search is not a kill gate: the presence of related work should produce differentiation options, open gaps, benchmark/evidence choices, and caution labels before any "direction is covered" conclusion. Follow the user's requested output shape: short list, related-work clusters, opportunity map, BibTeX candidates, benchmark table, search folder, or handoff summary.

Mandatory Search Checklist

In standard mode, complete this checklist before final output. In quick mode, run the relevant subset and return a compact checklist status.

1. The user's topic is converted into safe public search queries.
2. Shared source-quality exclusions are applied to search domains, candidates, and final outputs.
3. Sources prioritize primary or high-confidence venues: official proceedings, arXiv/OpenReview when appropriate, ACL Anthology, CVF, PMLR, ACM, IEEE, USENIX, DBLP, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref, and venue or project pages.
4. Candidate papers are deduplicated by title and linked to a stable URL.
5. Each included paper has venue/year/source status, paper type, and relevance rationale.
6. Paper quality is scored on insight, completeness, and experimental numeric evidence. Pure benchmark papers skip the numeric-results score and receive a benchmark-quality note instead.
7. Paper type is one of pure benchmark, pure method, method + benchmark, survey, system/tool, theory/proof, or other.
8. Every claim about a paper is traceable to the linked source or marked as inferred.
9. For idea-stage searches, each closest-work cluster includes what is already covered, what remains under-tested, and at least one possible differentiation or rescue route.
10. A literature-search folder is written when file access is available and the user asked for a reusable report or standard workflow.
11. When the search feeds idea optimization, an idea-grounding packet separates source-supported observations from inferred gaps and includes mechanism primitives, protocol anchors, cross-source conflict/open-gap relations, and confidence.
12. Optional handoff to ccf-literature-monitor, ccf-paper-writer, ccf-idea-optimizer, ccf-idea-reviewer, ccf-experiment-designer, or ccf-paper-reviewer follows CCFA handoff mode.

Workflow

1. Identify the search purpose: Related Work, Introduction support, novelty check, direction scouting, idea optimization, idea review, experiment design, benchmark/dataset discovery, or reviewer-risk diagnosis.
2. Create public queries from the user's topic. If the topic is too private or underspecified, ask only for non-sensitive keywords or infer broad keywords with lower confidence.
3. Load references/search-and-scoring.md. Search breadth depends on mode:

• Exploratory: 10-20 screened candidates, 5-10 final papers or clusters, plus opportunity gaps.
• Quick: 6-10 screened candidates, 3-6 final papers.
• Standard: 15-30 screened candidates, 8-15 final papers unless the user requests another size.

1. Search discovery indexes first, then verify candidates through stable paper pages or official proceedings when possible. Use broad web search only to find primary links; do not rely on snippets for final claims.
2. Filter by influence and fit. Prefer CCF-A/B conferences, top-field conferences, strong journals, widely used benchmarks, or recent high-signal preprints from credible groups. Exclude low-quality, predatory, inaccessible, or policy-excluded sources. For exploratory searches, include one or two "near miss" or negative-signal clusters if they reveal an open gap, failed assumption, outdated benchmark, missing user group, or neglected system constraint.
3. Classify each paper with the paper-type taxonomy and score it:

• insight: how clear and non-obvious the central idea is.
• completeness: method/evaluation/proof/dataset/reproducibility coverage.
• experimental numeric evidence: strength and relevance of reported numerical evidence; mark N/A benchmark for pure benchmark papers.

1. Write the search folder using references/report-template.md. Default folder name:

literature-search-YYYYMMDD-<topic-slug>/
  papers.md
  papers.csv
  search-notes.md
  idea-grounding.md  # include when the search feeds idea optimization

1. If the search feeds another module, provide a handoff summary:

• For writing: closest-work groups, novelty gaps, citation cautions.
• For idea optimization: a compact idea-grounding packet with evidence cards, mechanism primitives, protocol anchors, gap/conflict relations, stale/overcrowded directions, timely pivots, and minimum viable research questions. Keep whole abstracts and generic background out of the handoff.
• For idea review: novelty confidence and likely prior-art risks.
• For literature monitoring: watch queries, tracked competitors, and recurring overlap signals.
• For experiment design: datasets, baselines, metrics, benchmark protocols.
• For paper review: missing related work and baseline risks.

Adaptive Output Contracts

Return the requested artifact first. If the user asks for a list of papers, output the list/table directly. If they ask for Related Work material, output clusters and positioning notes. If they ask for a folder, write the folder and summarize it. Use the following defaults for standard or quick search reports.

For standard search, return:

Search purpose:
Queries used:
Source policy:
Folder written:
Top paper table:
Excluded source notes:
Closest-work clusters:
Opportunity map:
Quality-score rationale:
Benchmark/dataset candidates:
Novelty and positioning risks:
Recommended next module:
Checklist status:

For quick search, return:

Quick search scope:
Top candidates:
High-risk missing literature:
Opportunity hint:
Folder written:
Compact checklist status:

Reference Files

Load only what is needed:

• references/search-and-scoring.md: Use for source policy, source-quality exclusions, source tiers, paper-type taxonomy, and scoring anchors.
• references/report-template.md: Use when writing the literature-search folder files.