Loading skill
Install any skill in seconds. Free to start, no credit card required.
Get Started Free →brycewang-stanford/papis-cli-guide
Guide to Papis command-line document and bibliography manager for researchers
Passed 22 of 23 test cases with the skill, and 15 of 23 without it.
and 6 more in the full report
8 fixed14 passed either way0 still failing1 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
One of 8 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
I have a local file paper.pdf and a matching BibTeX entry inside reference.bib. What Papis command adds this document using the local BibTeX file for metadata rather than querying web servers?
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| Uses --from bibtex reference.bib to supply the local metadata source. | Missed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
Papis is a powerful command-line document and bibliography manager with over 2,000 GitHub stars, designed for researchers who prefer terminal-based workflows. Written in Python, it provides a fast, scriptable, and highly customizable alternative to GUI-based reference managers like Zotero or Mendeley.
The philosophy behind Papis is that bibliographic data should be stored in simple, human-readable files organized in a plain directory structure. Each document in a Papis library is a folder containing a YAML metadata file (info.yaml) and associated files (PDFs, supplementary materials, notes). This approach means your library is inherently portable, versionable with Git, and accessible through any tool that can read files and directories.
For researchers who spend most of their time in terminals, use Vim or Emacs for writing, and prefer scriptable tools over graphical interfaces, Papis offers a natural fit. It integrates with academic databases for metadata retrieval, supports BibTeX and BibLaTeX export, and provides an extensible plugin system for custom workflows. Despite its command-line interface, Papis also includes optional GUI pickers and a web interface for when visual browsing is helpful.
Install Papis using pip or your system package manager:
Via pip (recommended):
pip install papis
Via system package managers:
brew install papispacman -S papisnix-env -i papisInitial configuration: Papis stores its configuration in ~/.config/papis/config. Create a minimal configuration:
[settings]
default-library = research
[research]
dir = ~/Documents/papers
This tells Papis to manage a library called "research" stored in ~/Documents/papers. Each document you add will create a subdirectory within this path containing the document file and metadata.
Additional configuration options:
[settings]
default-library = research
test cases passed, vs 15 / 23 without
More skills from the same source and nearby in the registry, with their headline benchmark lift.