Priorwork

Hand your literature review to an AI agent, then check it — no terminal needed

日本語 README

Priorwork (as in prior work) hands topic-based literature reviews in the social sciences and clinical research to an AI agent (Claude Code, Antigravity and others). Ask in plain words: the agent sets the scope, searches, screens, chases citations, fills in a card for each paper, writes the review, checks it and exports a version for reading. You read it, then check and correct it in the VS Code sidebar.

scope → search → screen → chase citations → paper cards → text → check and export

What it does

• A reason for every decision. The agent records why it included or excluded each paper, and writes the scope into the report. One key on a paper's page overturns a decision, and the agent never overturns yours.
• It remembers in the repository. Candidates, decisions and the search history live in JSON files, so work carries on across conversations.
• Cards you can check. Each included paper gets a card written only from its abstract or full text, which says which of the two it was checked against, and with pages.
• Made-up citations are caught. Every "Author (year)" in the text must be a registered paper, and each DOI must point to that paper. A paper that has been retracted gives an error.
• Literature from several sources. Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex; in a medical survey, PubMed too, with MEDLINE status, cards for the clinical question and effect sizes, and open full texts from PMC.
• From your own manuscript. Give it a manuscript, finished or not, and get one report: what to add and where, a check of its citations, the literature it does not mention, comments on the argument. It never rewrites the manuscript.
• Zotero and Octavo. Link a Zotero collection to a survey to collect the papers and read your PDFs. Priorwork sends writing to Octavo projects with their .bib keys.
• No API keys for AI. The extension never calls an AI service itself. AI comes only through the agent you already use.

Install

Install the VS Code extension, open an empty folder and press Create a Workspace in the Priorwork sidebar. It prepares Python. On Windows and servers, see Installing Priorwork.

Getting started

Tell your agent, in the workspace:

Do a full review of the literature on how minimum wages affect employment.

Or use New Survey → Ask your agent to do it in the sidebar. The agent stops so you can check the scope and collect papers in Zotero; ask it not to stop if you prefer. Then read the report and correct it in the sidebar.

Guides

• Quick guide — from installing to your first review, in six steps
• Installing Priorwork — on your computer, Windows and servers
• Guide — using it in VS Code
• Starting from a manuscript — your own manuscript, and Octavo
• Reference — every command, for AI agents (also ./priorwork docs)

Contributing and license

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md. MIT License.