ResearchForge

Search academic literature, download open-access PDFs, and generate a citable bibliography — in three commands. For teams that need a traceable, replayable systematic review, ResearchForge also builds a full auditable package.

The command-line tool is rforge.

Quickstart

# 1. Search papers on a topic (saves results.jsonl + provenance)
rforge search batch --out ./research/my-topic \
  --query "prediction markets information aggregation" \
  --sources openalex,arxiv

# 2. Download open-access PDFs
rforge oa fetch --dir ./research/my-topic

# 3. Generate CITATIONS.md for every downloaded paper
rforge citations build --research-dir ./research

That's it. ./research/my-topic/pdfs/ holds the PDFs; ./research/CITATIONS.md holds numbered references [1]–[N] sorted by first author.

Multiple queries, one topic

Put queries one per line in a file:

# queries.txt
prediction markets information aggregation
LMSR logarithmic market scoring rule
binary prediction market trading strategy

rforge search batch --out ./research/my-topic \
  --queries queries.txt --sources openalex,semantic-scholar,arxiv
rforge oa fetch --dir ./research/my-topic
rforge citations build --research-dir ./research

Multiple topics, cross-topic analysis

rforge search batch --out ./research/topic-a --query "topic A" --sources openalex,arxiv
rforge search batch --out ./research/topic-b --query "topic B" --sources openalex,arxiv
rforge oa fetch --dir ./research/topic-a
rforge oa fetch --dir ./research/topic-b

# Which papers appear in both topics?
rforge meta overlap --research-dir ./research --min-topics 2

# Citations for everything downloaded across all topics
rforge citations build --research-dir ./research

Sources

--sources accepts a preset or a comma-separated list:

Preset	Covers
openalex,arxiv	Fast, broad coverage (good default)
openalex,arxiv,semantic-scholar	Adds citation graph + AI/CS depth
scholarly-fast	OpenAlex + arXiv + Crossref
all	All 44 sources (slow)
biomedical	PubMed, Europe PMC, bioRxiv
preprints	arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, ChemRxiv
open	Open-access sources only

Single sources: openalex, arxiv, crossref, semantic-scholar, europepmc, pubmed, and 38 more.

Commands

Core research workflow

Command	What it does
rforge search batch --out <dir> --query <q> --sources <s>	Search papers, write results.jsonl
rforge search batch ... --queries <file>	Batch search from a query file
rforge search resume --dir <dir>	Retry any failed queries
rforge oa fetch --dir <dir>	Download open-access PDFs to <dir>/pdfs/
rforge citations build --research-dir <dir>	Write CITATIONS.md with numbered references
rforge meta overlap --research-dir <dir>	Find papers appearing across multiple topics

Citation graph

Command	What it does
rforge citations expand --source semantic-scholar --paper <id> --direction both --depth 2 --out graph.json	Build a citation network around a paper
rforge citations report --graph graph.json --out report.md	Summarize the citation graph

Utilities

Command	What it does
rforge search stats --dir <dir>	Show hit counts and failure summary
rforge oa lookup <doi>	Check open-access status of a DOI
rforge doctor	Verify environment (pdftotext, network)
rforge version	Print version

Full reproducible review

For auditable systematic reviews with logged decisions and replayable packages:

rforge project create ./my-review --title "High entropy superconductors"
rforge forge init --project ./my-review \
  --question "Do artificial photosynthesis catalysts improve solar fuel generation?"
rforge forge status --project ./my-review
rforge forge next  --project ./my-review  # guided step-by-step workflow

The forge workflow walks you through approval gates, screening, evidence extraction, meta-analysis, and package export. The result is a *.rforgepkg any researcher can audit offline:

rforge package audit  ./review.rforgepkg
rforge package replay ./review.rforgepkg

See docs/reproducible-review-package.md for the full workflow.

Installation

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TrebuchetDynamics/research-forge/main/install.sh | bash

No Go required. Run rforge version to verify. To build from source (Go 1.26+):

go install github.com/TrebuchetDynamics/research-forge/cmd/rforge@latest

LLM / agent usage

ResearchForge ships an agent skill — skills/research-forge/SKILL.md — that works in any project. Install it once:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/research-forge && \
  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TrebuchetDynamics/research-forge/main/skills/research-forge/SKILL.md \
  > ~/.claude/skills/research-forge/SKILL.md

Then invoke from any Claude Code session:

Use the research-forge skill to research: <your topic>

The skill installs rforge if missing, runs the batch search, fetches PDFs, and writes provenance.json before finishing.

Architecture

Research question
  -> rforge search batch      (44 scholarly sources)
  -> rforge oa fetch          (open-access PDF download)
  -> rforge citations build   (CITATIONS.md, numbered bibliography)
  -> rforge meta overlap      (cross-topic synthesis)
  -> rforge forge             (full auditable review package)

Layer	Choice
Language	Go
CLI	rforge
Local web GUI	Go + HTMX (rforge ui)
Database	SQLite
PDF parsing	pdftotext; GROBID adapter seam
Metadata sources	OpenAlex, arXiv, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, PubMed, Europe PMC, and 38 more
Meta-analysis	arm-pair effect sizes and scientific benchmarking (--effect raw-continuous)

Development

See SKILLS.md and RESEARCH-FORGE-PRD.md. All new features require TDD (red-green-refactor).

Decision-gated scope

Local web GUI delivery targets Go + HTMX (ADR 0006; tracked in issue #2 and docs/web-gui-plan.md). License was selected by the repository owner on 2026-06-13 (tracked in issue #1 and docs/owner-decisions.md).

Run make todo-audit to verify unchecked TODO.md items are covered by owner decisions, make todo-completion-audit for the closeout checklist, or make decisions-markdown for a blocker table.

License

MIT License (SPDX: MIT), Copyright (c) 2026 Trebuchet Dynamics. See LICENSE.