---
name: literature-review
title: Synthesize a Scientific Literature Review
description: Turn a set of gathered sources into a defensible state-of-knowledge synthesis with a claim map, contradictions, gaps, and an explicit novelty burden.
keywords:
- level:L0
- scientific-method
---

Use this skill once relevant sources have been gathered and the question is
whether the collected literature actually settles a claim. It synthesizes what
is known; it does not perform new discovery. Route missing sources back to
`paper-search`.

Organize the sources around the decision, not around authors. For each
consequential claim, record which fetched sources support it, under what
material, condition, and population bounds, and where sources disagree.
Distinguish primary measurement from review restatement, and full-text
evidence from abstract-only evidence.

State what the literature establishes, what remains contested, and what is
simply absent. Treat novelty as an evidence question: a claim is novel only
when a bounded search failed to find prior work, never because none was
recalled. Preserve every contradiction and open question explicitly rather
than resolving it by picking the most confident source.

Return the synthesis, the claim-to-source map, unresolved disagreements,
evidence gaps that block the decision, and the exact next questions for
`paper-search` or `research-gap-analysis`.