AlphaXiv Paper Lookup
Look up any arxiv paper via alphaxiv.org to get a structured AI-generated overview instead of parsing raw PDFs.
Reading arxiv papers means downloading PDFs, squinting at dense formatting, and spending 30 minutes just to figure out if a paper is relevant to your work. Most papers could be assessed in 2 minutes with the right summary.
Who it's for: graduate students doing literature reviews, ML researchers tracking new papers, postdocs screening submissions, research engineers evaluating techniques, academic advisors staying current
Example
"Summarize arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345 and tell me if it's relevant to my transformer efficiency research" → Structured overview with key contributions, methodology, results, limitations, and relevance assessment — no PDF download needed
CLAUDE.md Template
New here? 3-minute setup guide → | Already set up? Copy the template below.
npx ccplaybooks add alphaxiv-paper-lookup# AlphaXiv Paper Lookup
Look up any arxiv paper on alphaxiv.org to get a structured AI-generated overview. This is faster and more reliable than trying to read a raw PDF.
## When to Use
- User shares an arxiv URL (e.g. `arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345`)
- User mentions a paper ID (e.g. `2401.12345`)
- User asks you to explain, summarize, or analyze a research paper
- User shares an alphaxiv URL (e.g. `alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.12345`)
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What This Does
Lets Claude look up any arxiv paper through alphaxiv.org to get a structured, AI-generated overview — no PDF parsing needed. Just provide an arxiv URL or paper ID, and it fetches a detailed analysis optimized for LLM consumption. Falls back to full paper text extraction when deeper detail is needed.
Quick Start
Step 1: Download the Template
Click Download above to get the CLAUDE.md file.
Step 2: Place in Your Project
Drop the template into any project folder where you work with research papers:
research/
├── CLAUDE.md
└── notes/ # Your paper notes
Step 3: Start Working
claude
Say: "Explain this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345"
Supported Input Formats
| Input | Extracted ID |
|---|---|
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345 |
2401.12345 |
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.12345 |
2401.12345 |
https://alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.12345 |
2401.12345 |
2401.12345v2 |
2401.12345v2 |
2401.12345 |
2401.12345 |
How It Works
- Fetch the overview — calls
alphaxiv.org/overview/{ID}.mdfor a structured report - Fall back to full text — if the overview lacks specific details, fetches
alphaxiv.org/abs/{ID}.md - Last resort — directs to the raw PDF at
arxiv.org/pdf/{ID}
No API keys or authentication required — all endpoints are public.
Tips
- The structured overview is usually sufficient — only fetch full text for specific equations, tables, or sections
- Works with any arxiv paper ID format, including versioned IDs like
2401.12345v2 - If a report returns 404, the paper hasn't been processed by AlphaXiv yet
Example Prompts
"Explain this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345"
"Summarize the key contributions of 2401.12345"
"What methods does this paper use? arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345"
"Compare the results in 2401.12345 with 2312.67890"
"What are the limitations discussed in this paper?"