Skill not invoked — Claude does a web search instead of calling Asta

Say 'use asta-skill' explicitly; academic tasks alone don't always route to MCP.

SKILL.md frontmatter wrong

Re-clone; the description is what triggers auto-activation.

asta-skill — Installer & Démo en direct

Pourquoi l'utiliser

Fonctionnalités clés

Eight Semantic Scholar tools via MCP (get_paper, search_papers_by_relevance, get_citations, snippet_search, ...)
Intent→tool decision table so Claude picks the right function
Workflow patterns to avoid context-blow-up pitfalls (fields=citations warning baked in)
Batch operations for efficiency (get_paper_batch)
Works across Claude Code / Codex / Cursor / Windsurf / OpenClaw

Démo en direct

Aperçu en pratique

asta-skill.replay ▶ prêt

0/0

Installation

Dépôt de l’auteur · Documentation officielle des Skills Claude

Cas d'usage

Usages concrets : asta-skill

Run a literature review on a specific research question

👤 Grad students and researchers ⏱ ~60 min intermediate

Quand l'utiliser : You have a question and want to quickly map the relevant papers, not wade through Google Scholar.

Déroulement

Kick off the search

Use asta-skill — find highly-cited papers on retrieval-augmented generation from 2023-2024.✓ Copié

→ Claude calls search_papers_by_relevance with good filters, not a generic query
Walk the citation graph

For the top 3, show me what cited them since.✓ Copié

→ get_citations calls with appropriate filtering
Pull evidence snippets

Extract a 500-word passage from each paper explaining their main evaluation method.✓ Copié

→ snippet_search returns targeted passages

Résultat : A mapped review with citation chains and evidence snippets — not just titles.

Pièges

Requesting fields=citations bulk-returns megabytes — The skill warns against this — trust the guidance and paginate instead

Combiner avec : planning-with-files

Find a researcher's key papers and trace their influence

👤 Anyone profiling a potential collaborator or advisor ⏱ ~20 min beginner

Quand l'utiliser : You want a fast, accurate view of someone's publication record.

Déroulement

Resolve the author

asta-skill — find the author 'Jane Smith' who works on graph neural networks.✓ Copié

→ search_authors_by_name with disambiguation
Fetch papers

Get their papers sorted by citation count.✓ Copié

→ get_author_papers call with sort
Impact snapshot

For the top 3, who's cited them most and is building on the work?✓ Copié

→ Citation traversal showing ongoing lineage

Résultat : A one-page profile of a researcher's impact.

Combinaisons

Associez-le à d'autres MCPs pour un effet X10

asta-skill + planning-with-files

Literature reviews span days — persist findings.md and next-reads.md

Use planning-with-files — findings.md for papers read, next-reads.md for the queue.✓ Copié

asta-skill + filesystem

Save extracted snippets as notes in your Obsidian vault

For each paper, save the snippet to ~/obsidian/papers/<title>.md.✓ Copié

Outils

Ce que ce MCP expose

Outil	Entrées	Quand appeler	Coût
search_papers_by_relevance	query + filters	Starting a literature search from a question	1 MCP call
get_paper / get_paper_batch	id or [ids]	Need full metadata on a known paper or list	1 MCP call (batch saves round-trips)
get_citations	paper id + filters + pagination	Walking citation graph forward	1 MCP call
snippet_search	paper id + query	Need evidence-level passages to ground claims	1 MCP call
search_authors_by_name / get_author_papers	name + disambiguators	Profiling a researcher	1 MCP call

Coût et limites

Coût d'exécution

Quota d'API: Semantic Scholar API limits via Asta MCP — check Ai2's current terms
Tokens par appel: Varies; fields=citations can blow up context so avoid it
Monétaire: Free — skills are local files; Asta MCP itself is free for research use
Astuce: Prefer batch calls and paginated citation fetches; snippet_search beats fetching full bodies.

Sécurité

Permissions, secrets, portée

Stockage des identifiants : No credentials in the skill. Asta MCP setup may involve API keys.

Sortie de données : Queries go to Semantic Scholar via the Asta MCP server

Dépannage

Erreurs courantes et correctifs

Wrong trigger keywords — context blows up on citation fetch

Don't request fields=citations — paginate with get_citations and filters.

Alternatives

asta-skill vs autres

Alternative	Quand l'utiliser	Compromis
arxiv MCP	You only need preprints, not cross-source citation graphs	Narrower source; no citation traversal
Raw Google Scholar	Quick one-off lookups without MCP setup	No structured tools, scraping-ish

Plus

Ressources

📖 Lire le README officiel sur GitHub

🐙 Voir les issues ouvertes

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