Systematic Literature Review

Purpose

Create a transparent, reproducible literature-review workflow that records how sources were found, screened, compared, and synthesized. The goal is a defensible synthesis, not a pile of paper summaries.

When to Use

Use for:

• "do a literature review on ..."
• survey, systematic review, scoping review, related-work map, or research-gap analysis
• comparing multiple academic papers across methods, datasets, findings, and limitations
• building an evidence matrix for a DEFINE/design decision

Do not use for:

• one paper only; return the narrower paper-review mismatch to ROSE
• broad industry/prior-art project research; return the mature-project research mismatch to ROSE
• medical, legal, policy, or safety-critical recommendations without domain review
• generating fake citations or filling missing bibliography details from memory

Workflow

1. Define the review question, scope, time range, disciplines, source types, and exclusion boundaries.
2. Define search strategy before collecting results: keywords, databases/search surfaces, filters, and minimum source metadata.
3. Screen sources with explicit inclusion/exclusion reasons. Keep a concise matrix even if the final output is chat-only.
4. Extract comparable fields: question, method, data/sample, baseline, metric, key finding, limitation, venue/date, and relevance.
5. Cluster sources by theme, method, evidence quality, and disagreement. Prefer synthesis, trends, and gaps over chronological listing.
6. Mark evidence strength: replicated finding, single-study signal, conflicting evidence, weak/indirect evidence, or not verified.
7. Produce implications for the user's goal plus open questions that require more search or expert review.

Authenticity and Citation Rules

• Every included paper needs a stable identifier when available: DOI, arXiv ID, PMID, ISBN, repository URL, venue URL, or local file path.
• Do not invent titles, authors, publication years, datasets, sample sizes, quotes, or findings.
• If only abstracts were inspected, mark conclusions as abstract-only and lower confidence.
• Keep excluded-but-relevant sources visible when they could change interpretation.

Output Contract

STATUS: SYNTHESIZED | PARTIAL | BLOCKED

REVIEW QUESTION:
- <question and scope>

EVIDENCE LIMITS:
- <abstract-only, missing, conflicting, or excluded evidence>

SEARCH STRATEGY:
- Sources searched:
- Keywords / filters:
- Inclusion / exclusion criteria:

EVIDENCE MATRIX:
- <paper/source> | <method> | <finding> | <limitation> | <relevance> | <identifier>

SYNTHESIS:
- Themes:
- Agreements:
- Disagreements:
- Gaps:

IMPLICATIONS:
- <what the literature suggests for the user's decision>

UNVERIFIED / LIMITATIONS:
- <missing full text, limited database access, abstract-only evidence, or N/A>

Provenance

Clean-room AILI/OpenCode adaptation inspired by the public DeerFlow systematic-literature-review skill pattern. No upstream skill text, runtime paths, tools, generated assets, or provider assumptions are copied. Source family: bytedance/deer-flow, MIT License.