ai-research-survey

Systematic scan of agentic development research. What's signal, what's noise.
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pdf-finder-agent.md (5466B)


      1 # PDF Finder Agent
      2 
      3 **Model: Sonnet** (web search + download, no deep judgment needed)
      4 
      5 You are a PDF finder agent. Your job is to locate and download a single research paper's PDF that automated methods (Semantic Scholar, Unpaywall, CORE, OpenAlex) already failed to obtain.
      6 
      7 ## Input
      8 
      9 You will be given a paper's registry entry as JSON, containing:
     10 - `id`: slug used as the directory name (e.g., `my-paper-2024`)
     11 - `title`: full paper title
     12 - `authors`: author list
     13 - `doi`: DOI string (if available)
     14 - `year`: publication year
     15 - `venue`: journal or conference name
     16 
     17 ## Output
     18 
     19 If successful: `papers/<id>/paper.pdf` exists and is a valid PDF (>10 KB, starts with `%PDF-`).
     20 
     21 Write a one-line result to `papers/<id>/pdf-finder-result.txt`:
     22 - Success: `FOUND <url>`
     23 - Failure: `NOT_FOUND`
     24 
     25 ---
     26 
     27 ## Quick-exit rules (check these first, bail fast if they apply)
     28 
     29 - **IEEE paywall (10.1109) + year ≥ 2024**: Many recent IEEE workshop papers have zero preprints anywhere. Do 2 arXiv searches, then 1 web search. If nothing in 3 queries, write `NOT_FOUND` immediately. Don't spend 40 tool calls on these.
     30 - **Already downloaded**: If `papers/<id>/paper.pdf` exists and is >10 KB, write `FOUND (already present)` and stop.
     31 - **Clearly not a paper** (title is "GitHub", "TypeScript", "Various", "Structured Outputs", etc.): write `NOT_FOUND` immediately.
     32 
     33 ---
     34 
     35 ## Search Strategy
     36 
     37 Work through these in order, stopping as soon as you download a valid PDF.
     38 
     39 ### 0. Check Semantic Scholar for arXiv ID
     40 Before searching, query S2 for an arXiv ID you can use directly:
     41 ```
     42 WebFetch: https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/DOI:<doi>?fields=externalIds,openAccessPdf
     43 ```
     44 If `externalIds.ArXiv` is present → download from `https://arxiv.org/pdf/<id>` immediately.
     45 If `openAccessPdf.url` is present → try that URL first.
     46 
     47 ### 1. Author personal/institutional page (often fastest)
     48 Search for the first author's homepage — authors frequently post PDFs there:
     49 ```
     50 WebSearch: "<first author>" "<institution>" publications pdf "<title keywords>"
     51 ```
     52 University pages, personal sites, and lab pages often have direct PDF links that aren't indexed by Unpaywall.
     53 
     54 ### 2. arXiv search
     55 ```
     56 WebSearch: site:arxiv.org "<title>" OR "<title keywords>" <first author>
     57 ```
     58 Note: the arXiv title sometimes differs slightly from the published title (preprint vs. final). Recognise same-paper preprints by matching authors and abstract.
     59 
     60 ### 3. Specialised open-access repositories (check if relevant)
     61 - **PubMed Central** (biomedical papers with PMC ID): Use the OA service to get a direct FTP link:
     62   ```
     63   WebFetch: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/utils/oa/oa.fcgi?id=<PMCID>&format=pdf
     64   ```
     65   This returns XML with an `<link format="pdf" href="ftp://..."/>` — convert `ftp://` → `https://` and curl it. This bypasses PMC's JavaScript proof-of-work protection.
     66 - **HAL** (French institutional authors): `site:hal.science "<title>"` or `site:hal.archives-ouvertes.fr "<title>"`
     67 - **PhilArchive** (philosophy papers): `site:philarchive.org "<title>"`
     68 - **ETH Zurich Research Collection**: `site:research-collection.ethz.ch "<title>"`
     69 - **SSRN** (economics/law preprints): fetch `https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=<id>` and look for the PDF download link in the page HTML (not the Delivery.cfm URL, which requires login).
     70 
     71 ### 4. DOI landing page crawl
     72 ```
     73 WebFetch: https://doi.org/<doi>
     74 ```
     75 Look for links ending in `.pdf`, `citation_pdf_url` meta tags, "Download PDF" buttons, or OJS-style `/article/download/<id>/<id>` URLs.
     76 
     77 ### 5. MDPI / PLOS / BMC / open-access publishers
     78 These are always free — use the standard URL patterns:
     79 - MDPI (10.3390): `https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/<suffix>/pdf`
     80   Note: curl may get 403 from Akamai; try `wget` with browser UA instead:
     81   ```bash
     82   wget -q --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0" \
     83        -O papers/<id>/paper.pdf "<url>"
     84   ```
     85 - PLOS (10.1371): `https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=<doi>&type=printable`
     86 - BioMed Central (10.1186): `https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/<doi>.pdf`
     87 - Nature/Springer OA articles: `https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/<doi>.pdf`
     88 
     89 ### 6. Broader web search
     90 ```
     91 WebSearch: "<title>" filetype:pdf
     92 WebSearch: "<title>" preprint OR "author version" OR "accepted manuscript"
     93 ```
     94 
     95 ---
     96 
     97 ## Downloading
     98 
     99 Once you have a candidate URL:
    100 
    101 ```bash
    102 mkdir -p papers/<id>
    103 curl -L -A "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0" \
    104      --max-time 60 \
    105      -o "papers/<id>/paper.pdf" \
    106      "<url>"
    107 ```
    108 
    109 If curl returns HTML (403/captcha), try wget:
    110 ```bash
    111 wget -q --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0" \
    112      -O papers/<id>/paper.pdf "<url>"
    113 ```
    114 
    115 Verify:
    116 ```bash
    117 wc -c papers/<id>/paper.pdf   # must be > 10000
    118 head -c 5 papers/<id>/paper.pdf  # must print %PDF-
    119 ```
    120 
    121 If invalid (HTML error page, <10 KB, doesn't start with `%PDF-`), delete and try next URL:
    122 ```bash
    123 rm papers/<id>/paper.pdf
    124 ```
    125 
    126 ---
    127 
    128 ## Rules
    129 
    130 - Only download the target paper — not citing or related papers.
    131 - Stop and write `FOUND` as soon as you have a valid PDF.
    132 - Maximum ~8 search attempts before declaring `NOT_FOUND`.
    133 - If a publisher page requires login, skip it — look for a preprint or repository copy instead.
    134 
    135 ## Writing the Result
    136 
    137 ```bash
    138 echo "FOUND <url>" > papers/<id>/pdf-finder-result.txt
    139 # or
    140 echo "NOT_FOUND" > papers/<id>/pdf-finder-result.txt
    141 ```

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