Lit Review

For each candidate, make a quick judgment:

• Load-bearing: Directly addresses an open question or gap. Must read in detail.
• Contextual: Provides useful background or methodology. Worth a note.
• Incremental: Minor variation on known work. Skip unless nothing better exists.

Read load-bearing and contextual papers using WebFetch. Skip incremental ones.

Step 4: Verify and write literature notes

For each paper worth keeping, you MUST mechanically verify the URL before creating a note. This is mandatory — never create notes from memory alone.

Verification procedure (per paper):

1. Fetch the URL using WebFetch. For arxiv URLs, fetch the abstract page (e.g., https://arxiv.org/abs/XXXX.XXXXX).
2. Title match: Compare the fetched page title against the claimed title. Minor formatting differences are acceptable; a completely different topic is a FAIL.
3. Author match: Confirm at least one claimed author appears on the fetched page.
4. On PASS: Create the literature note with Verified: YYYY-MM-DD (today's date).
5. On FAIL: Do NOT create a literature note. Record the topic as a gap in the review summary. Never substitute a fabricated citation.
6. On inconclusive (paywall, 404, timeout): Create the note with Verified: false and flag for manual verification. Do not cite in publications until verified.

Save verified notes to literature/ within the project directory (create it if needed), or to docs/literature/ if not project-specific. Follow the literature note schema in CLAUDE.md.

Key requirements:

• Mechanical URL verification is mandatory. Parametric memory ("I know this paper exists") is not verification. You must fetch the URL and confirm title + author.
• Direct quotes for key claims. Do not paraphrase — quote the authors and cite the page or section.
• CI layer mapping. State which CI layers the paper addresses and how.

Step 5: Gap analysis

After reviewing the literature, identify:

• What questions from the project remain unanswered by the literature?
• Which CI layers are well-covered vs. under-studied?
• Are there methodological patterns across papers that we should adopt or avoid?

Step 6: Create follow-up tasks

MANDATORY. Literature reviews often reveal actionable findings that require follow-up work. You must create tasks to ensure this work happens.

For each load-bearing paper that addresses an open question or enables new work:

1. Identify the action: What does this paper enable or suggest? (e.g., "Evaluate method X on our dataset", "Implement technique Y", "Compare our approach to baseline Z")

2. Create a task in the relevant project's TASKS.md:

   - [ ] <action verb phrase>
     Why: Literature review finding — <paper title> enables/suggests <brief rationale>.
     Done when: <observable condition>
     Priority: medium
     Source: lit-review YYYY-MM-DD, <paper title>
   

3. If no tasks are warranted (literature fully answers questions with no follow-up needed), state this explicitly in the review summary: "No follow-up tasks: literature fully addressed the inquiry."

This gate ensures literature discoveries become actionable work, not forgotten knowledge.

Output format

## Literature review: <topic>
Scope: <project name or "general">
Date: YYYY-MM-DD

### Papers reviewed
| Title | Type | CI Layers | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| <title> | load-bearing / contextual / incremental | L1-L5 | <1-line summary> |

### Key findings
<bulleted list of the most important things learned, with paper references>

### Gap analysis
<what remains unknown, which CI layers are under-studied>

### Follow-up tasks
<list of tasks created in project TASKS.md files, or "None: literature fully addressed the inquiry.">

### Recommended reading order
<if someone has limited time, which 2-3 papers matter most and why>

### Notes saved
<list of literature note files created, with paths>

Prioritize quality over quantity. Three well-analyzed load-bearing papers are worth more than ten superficial summaries.

Commit

Follow docs/sops/commit-workflow.md. Commit message: lit-review: <topic> — <N> papers reviewed