Virtual Reading Group

Orchestrate parallel expert agents to read papers, discuss findings, challenge each other's interpretations, and synthesize an integrated discussion document with traceable citations.

Quick Start

Minimum inputs required:

1. Research question — the lens through which papers are analyzed
2. Paper list — paths to PDFs/text files, or paper descriptions for web lookup
3. Output directory — where all outputs are written

Optional inputs:

• Custom expert personas (default: see references/default-personas.md)
• Custom junior researcher persona
• Language preference (default: English)
• Number of experts (default: auto-calculated from paper count)

Workflow Overview

The skill runs 4 sequential phases. Each phase must complete before the next begins.

For detailed prompts and phase specifications: Read references/workflow.md.

Orchestration Procedure

⚠️ Important: The prompts below are abbreviated summaries. For full prompt templates that produce quality output, use references/workflow.md. The pseudocode blocks show orchestration structure — adapt to your actual sub-agent spawning mechanism.

1. Validate Inputs

- Confirm research question is specified
- Confirm paper list is non-empty
- Confirm output directory exists or create it
- Load personas from user input or references/default-personas.md

2. Calculate Expert Assignment

Determine number of experts and paper batches:

if paper_count <= 4:
    num_experts = 1
elif paper_count <= 10:
    num_experts = 2
elif paper_count <= 20:
    num_experts = min(4, ceil(paper_count / 5))
else:
    num_experts = min(8, ceil(paper_count / 5))

Distribute papers evenly across experts (max 5 per expert).

# ⚠️ Context contamination warning: assigning >5 papers per expert degrades
# note quality — later papers in the batch get shallower treatment as context
# fills up. Prefer 3-5 papers per agent for best results.

3. Execute Phase 1 — Paper Reading (Parallel)

For each expert, spawn a sub-agent with:

• Label: expert-reader-{expert_name}
• Model: opus (or sonnet for budget)
• Core instructions:
  • Read assigned papers through research question lens
  • Write notes using references/paper-notes-template.md
  • Save as {output_dir}/{AuthorYear}_notes.md
  • Write session summary with cross-cutting themes
  • Critical: Quote specific passages with section labels — all claims must be traceable