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. Use when: - 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`)
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.
Parse the paper ID from whatever the user provides:
| Input | Paper 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 |
AlphaXiv’s API can be intermittently slow (e.g. cold starts). Use explicit timeouts + retries.
curl -sS --connect-timeout 5 --max-time 60 \
--retry 6 --retry-all-errors --retry-delay 1 \
"https://api.alphaxiv.org/papers/v3/{PAPER_ID}"
Extract versionId from the JSON response. This is the UUID needed for the next call.
If this returns 404, the paper hasn't been indexed on alphaxiv yet.
curl -sS --connect-timeout 5 --max-time 120 \
--retry 6 --retry-all-errors --retry-delay 1 \
"https://api.alphaxiv.org/papers/v3/{VERSION_ID}/overview/en"
The response contains:
intermediateReport — the machine-readable report (structured text, best for LLM consumption)overview — the full markdown blog post (human-readable)summary — structured summary with fields: summary, originalProblem, solution, keyInsights, resultscitations — list of cited papers with titles and justificationsPrefer intermediateReport when available — it's specifically formatted for machine consumption. Fall back to summary fields if intermediateReport is null.
If the intermediateReport, summary, and overview fields don't contain the specific information the user is asking about (e.g. a particular equation, table, or section), fetch the full paper text:
curl -s "https://alphaxiv.org/abs/{PAPER_ID}.md"
This returns the full extracted text of the paper as markdown. Only use this as a fallback — the overview and intermediate report are usually sufficient.
If this returns 404, the full text hasn't been processed yet. As a last resort, direct the user to the PDF at https://arxiv.org/pdf/{PAPER_ID}.
curl: add --max-time 120 (or more) + --retry-all-errors.timeout=(5, 120)) and retries/backoff.intermediateReport is null: Use summary and overview fields instead.For reliable automation inside the vault, use:
python .pi/skills/alphaxiv-paper-lookup/scripts/fetch_overview.py {PAPER_ID} > /tmp/alphaxiv.json
It prints a single JSON object containing both paper and overview, with retries/backoff.
curl -6.en with a language code (fr, de, es, zh, ja, ar, hi, pt) for translated overviews.