Read Paper

📄 Paper Reading Skill

Read a research paper and convert it into:

• one structured paper note
• one or more linked research project notes

This skill transforms reading into reusable research ideas.

CRITICAL RULES (NON-NEGOTIABLE)

• Paper notes live only in Reading/
• Use Templates/Paper Note.md exactly - preserve ALL headings, emojis, and structure
• Project notes live only in Projects/
• Never create topic notes or concept-only notes
• Research ideas always live as project notes
• Paper notes must never link to MOCs
• Paper notes may link only to:
  • project notes (in Projects/)
  • other paper notes (in Reading/)
• NO OTHER LINK TYPES ALLOWED - no concepts, no methods, no techniques
• Bullet points only — no prose
• Aggressive [[wiki linking]] required BUT ONLY to projects/papers

TEMPLATE COMPLIANCE (MANDATORY)

BEFORE starting, read the template:

1. Use the view tool to read Templates/Paper Note.md
2. Copy the EXACT structure including:
   • All emoji section headers (🧾, 🌍, ❓, 💡, etc.)
   • All subsection prompts (### questions)
   • All markdown formatting
3. Fill in content under each subsection prompt
4. Do NOT remove, rename, or flatten any sections

Template location: Templates/Paper Note.md

Rules:

• Keep ALL emojis exactly as shown in template
• Keep ALL section headings exactly as shown in template
• Keep ALL subsection prompts (### questions) exactly as shown
• Answer each subsection with bullet points below the prompt
• Do NOT remove or rename sections
• Do NOT flatten the structure
• Place project links ONLY in "Linked Research Projects" subsection
• Place paper links ONLY in "Connections to Other Work" subsections

LINKING RULES (CRITICAL)

✅ ALLOWED Links in Paper Notes

1. [[Project Name]] - links to files in Projects/
2. [[Paper Title]] - links to influential papers
   • Link to papers even if they don't exist in vault yet (paper notes can be created later)
   • MUST use exact, full paper titles in Title Case
   • MUST format as wiki links with double brackets
   • Example: [[Attention Is All You Need]] not "Attention is all you need"
   • Example: [[BERT: Pre-Training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding]]
   • Example of future paper link: [[Representation Engineering - A Top-Down Approach to AI Transparency]]

❌ FORBIDDEN Links in Paper Notes

• [[Transformer Architecture]] - this is a concept, NOT allowed
• [[Attention Mechanism]] - this is a technique, NOT allowed
• [[Self-Supervised Learning]] - this is a method, NOT allowed
• [[BERT]] - this is a model name, NOT allowed (unless it's a paper title)
• [[Cross-Entropy Loss]] - this is a concept, NOT allowed
• Any link that is not explicitly a project or paper

How to Handle Technical Terms

Do NOT link them. Just write them as plain text.

Examples:

• ❌ "The paper uses [[attention mechanisms]]"
• ✅ "The paper uses attention mechanisms"
• ❌ "They employ [[contrastive learning]]"
• ✅ "They employ contrastive learning"

Exception: Only link if you're creating/referencing a PROJECT about that mechanism:

• ✅ "Uses attention mechanisms → [[Scaling Laws for Attention Heads]]" (project)

Paper Access Rules

When searching for papers online:

1. ALWAYS try the arXiv HTML version first: https://arxiv.org/html/[paper-id]
2. If HTML is unavailable (404, missing, or incomplete), download the TeX source: https://arxiv.org/src/[paper-id]
   • The source is a .tar.gz archive — extract it and read the .tex files
   • Focus on the main .tex file (often main.tex or the largest .tex file)
   • Extract content from the TeX source as you would from HTML
3. DO NOT download PDFs — TeX source is always preferred over PDF
4. Only use PDFs as a last resort if neither HTML nor TeX source is available

Workflow

0. Read the template FIRST

MANDATORY FIRST STEP:

Use view tool on: Templates/Paper Note.md

Study the structure before creating the paper note.

1. Create paper note

• File name: exact paper title
• if present in paper title, exchange : for -
• Location: Reading/
• Copy template structure EXACTLY from Templates/Paper Note.md
• Fill each section with bullet points under the subsection prompts
• Do NOT remove subsection headings or prompts
• Link to existing projects immediately in "Linked Research Projects"
• Only propose new projects - don't create them yet

2. Fill template sections

Answer each subsection prompt with bullet points:

🌍 Background: Answer both subsection prompts ❓ Problem Statement: Answer all three subsection prompts 💡 Key Idea: Answer all three subsection prompts 🧭 High-Level Approach: Describe method/framework 🔬 Technical Details / Analysis: Answer all three subsection prompts 📊 Main Results / Observations: List findings 🧩 Interpretation: Answer both subsection prompts ⚠️ Limitations / Open Questions: List items 🔗 Connections to Other Work: Fill three subsections with [[Paper Title]] wiki links

• Link to ALL influential papers mentioned or referenced in the current paper
• Link even if paper notes don't exist in vault yet (they will be added when those papers are read)
• MUST use exact, full paper titles in Title Case
• MUST format as wiki links: [[Title]] not plain text
• Extract titles from paper references/citations when available 🚀 Relevance for My Research: Answer two prompts + add project links

CRITICAL: Write technical details as plain text. Do NOT create wiki links for concepts, methods, or techniques.

3. Identify existing projects and propose new ones

Part A: Link to existing projects immediately

• Search for existing projects in Projects/ that relate to the paper
• Add links to these existing projects in the paper note under "Linked Research Projects"
• No user approval needed for linking to existing projects
• Note: Reciprocal links (project → paper) will be added in step 4

Part B: Propose new projects (requires user approval)

CRITICAL: Ground proposals in the paper itself, not inferred extensions

Extract ideas directly from the paper's content:

• Explicit open questions the paper identifies (e.g., "future work", "unclear", "remains to be seen")
• Limitations the authors acknowledge
• Unexplained observations or surprising results mentioned in the paper
• Assumptions stated but not tested
• Gaps the paper identifies in prior work
• Follow-up experiments the paper suggests

DO NOT infer extensions beyond what the paper discusses. If the paper doesn't mention it, don't propose it.

Before creating ANY new project files:

1. Re-read the paper's "Limitations / Open Questions" section you filled in step 2
2. For each open question or limitation that could be a standalone project:
   • Proposed project title (describes the idea, grounded in paper content)
   • Quote or paraphrase from the paper showing where this question/gap appears
   • 1-2 sentence description of what it would explore
   • Note if it's related to any existing project
3. Use AskUserQuestion tool to let the user select which projects to create:
   • Use multiSelect: true so the user can pick multiple projects
   • Each option: label = project title, description = 1-line summary of what it explores
   • Include a "None" option with description "Don't create any new projects"
   • Example:

     question: "Which projects should I create from this paper?"
     header: "Projects"
     multiSelect: true
     options:
       - label: "Project Title A", description: "Explores X based on paper's open question about Y"
       - label: "Project Title B", description: "Tests whether Z holds, motivated by limitation W"
       - label: "None", description: "Don't create any new projects"
     

4. Wait for user selection
5. Only create the selected projects (skip if "None" selected)

Project title examples:

• Detecting Representation Drift During Fine-Tuning
• Preventing Emergent Misalignment via Gradient Monitoring

For each approved new project:

• create a new file in Projects/
• use Templates/Project.md as template
• status: seed
• add 1–3 bullet points minimum
• link the current paper under Relevant Papers

4. Create approved new projects and finalize bidirectional links

After receiving user approval, create the new project files:

• Create only the approved new projects in Projects/
• Use Templates/Project.md as template
• Fill with the descriptions you prepared
• Link the current paper under Relevant Papers in each project

CRITICAL: Bidirectional linking for existing projects

For every project linked from the paper note (both existing and newly created):

1. Open the project note in Projects/
2. Locate the "Relevant Papers" section
3. Add a wiki link to the paper note if it's not already there:
   • Format: [[Paper Title]] (the paper note file name)
   • Use Title Case with the exact paper title
   • Place it in the "Relevant Papers" section
4. Save the project note

This ensures the graph remains consistent: if paper → project link exists, then project → paper link must also exist.

Then update the paper note:

• Add newly created project links to "Linked Research Projects" (existing projects should already be linked from step 1)
• Ensure paper links in "🔗 Connections to Other Work" subsections are complete
• CRITICAL: Use exact paper title in Title Case when linking to papers
• CRITICAL: Format paper references as wiki links: [[Paper Title]] not plain text
• If you don't know the exact title, use a descriptive title in Title Case
• Examples:
  • ✅ [[Sparse Autoencoders Find Highly Interpretable Features in Language Models]]
  • ✅ [[Concept Bottleneck Models]]
  • ❌ "Bricken et al. 2023" (not a wiki link)
  • ❌ [[sparse autoencoders]] (not title case, too generic)

VERIFY: Every [[link]] in the paper note is either:

1. A file in Projects/ (project note) - appears under "Linked Research Projects"
2. A paper title as wiki link - appears under "Connections to Other Work" as [[Title Case Paper Title]]
   • Paper notes may not exist in vault yet, but will be added when those papers are read
   • Use exact, full paper titles from references

5. Minimal quality check

Before finishing:

• ALL template sections present with emojis
• ALL subsection prompts (### questions) present
• Paper note contains ≥ 5 internal links (ONLY to projects/papers)
• At least one project note created or reused
• No paragraph longer than 3 bullets
• VERIFY: Every wiki link is to a file in Projects/ or Reading/
• No concept links (attention, transformers, etc.) - only plain text

6. Update maintenance counters

After completing the paper note (and any new projects):

1. Read .claude/vault_maintanance.md
2. Increment papers_since_audit_links, papers_since_vault_index, and papers_since_validate_links each by 1
3. If any new project files were created, increment projects_since_audit_links and projects_since_vault_index each by the number of new projects created
4. Write the updated values back to .claude/vault_maintanance.md

Output Style

• bullet points only
• fragments preferred
• dense information
• no narrative text
• preserve ALL template structure, emojis, and subsection prompts
• technical terms as plain text, NOT wiki links
• links ONLY to projects (Projects/) or papers (Reading/)
• don't include : in file names. Exchange : always with -

Goal

Convert reading into:

• explicit mechanisms
• reusable research ideas
• connected project graph
• long-term synthesis potential
• properly structured notes following template exactly

Important workflow:

• Link to existing projects immediately without asking
• Propose new projects and get user approval before creating them

A paper note without linked projects is considered incomplete. A paper note that doesn't follow the template structure is considered invalid.

Self-Check Before Completing

Template structure:

1. Did I read Templates/Paper Note.md first? ✅
2. Are ALL emoji section headers present? ✅
3. Are ALL subsection prompts (### questions) present? ✅
4. Did I answer each subsection separately? ✅

Links: For EVERY [[link]] in the paper note:

1. Is this link pointing to a file in Projects/? ✅
2. Is this link pointing to a file in Reading/? ✅
3. Is this link a concept/method/technique? ❌ REMOVE
4. For paper links: Is it in Title Case with wiki link brackets? ✅
5. For paper links: Did I use the full paper title, not "Author et al."? ✅

Bidirectional linking verification:

1. For each project linked in the paper note:
   • Did I add/verify the reciprocal link from project → paper? ✅
   • Does the project's "Relevant Papers" section include this paper? ✅
2. All paper-project relationships are now bidirectional ✅

If uncertain whether something should be a link: Don't link it. Use plain text.

Maintenance counters:

1. Did I increment papers_since_audit_links, papers_since_vault_index, papers_since_validate_links in .claude/vault_maintanance.md? ✅
2. Did I increment projects_since_audit_links and projects_since_vault_index for each new project created? ✅