phillit

PhilLit

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PhilLit generates analytical literature reviews with verified bibliographies for philosophy research. Give it a topic description, and it searches academic databases, collects and checks references, and writes a structured review — typically in half an hour.

PhilLit is free and open-source. You only pay Anthropic for using Claude. This is a research project evaluating AI-generated literature reviews for philosophy (see below).

Example Reviews

• Extended Mind and Cognitive Offloading
• Metaphilosophy of Literature Reviews
• Moral Value of DIY

Highlights

• Searches multiple academic databases — Semantic Scholar, PhilPapers, SEP, IEP, OpenAlex, CORE, arXiv, and NDPR
• Checks every reference — All citations are sourced from academic databases (not generated by the LLM) and validated against CrossRef
• Produces a structured review with a bibliography you can import into Zotero, BibDesk, or any reference manager
• Outputs a Word document and a BibTeX file ready for reference managers or LaTeX

What does it cost?

PhilLit itself is free. Running it requires Claude Code, which needs a subscription or API access. Each literature review uses roughly $9 to $13 in API credits, depending on whether you use Sonnet or Opus.

Quick Start

What you need:

• Claude Code — the AI coding tool that runs PhilLit
• uv and jq on your PATH — PhilLit runs its Python through uv and parses JSON with jq
• A Brave Search API key (free tier) and, optionally, a Semantic Scholar key for better search results

1. Install the plugin in Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add AI-4-Phi/PhilLit
/plugin install phillit@phillit

2. Set up a working directory — create or open the folder where your reviews will live, then run once:

/phillit:setup

This creates a .phillit/ marker and a .env for your API keys, and merges PhilLit's permission rules into that directory's .claude/settings.json (see Trust model). Then add your keys to .env. If Claude Code asks whether you trust this folder, accept — the merged permission rules only take effect in trusted folders.

3. Request a review — describe your topic and PhilLit does the rest (~45 minutes):

I need a literature review on [topic].

[Describe the topic in 1-5 paragraphs]

Updating: plugins from third-party marketplaces do not auto-update by default. To get the newest version:

/plugin marketplace update phillit
/plugin update phillit@phillit

Or enable auto-update for the phillit marketplace in the /plugin → Marketplaces tab to pick up new versions at startup.

What does it look like?

PhilLit running a literature review. The system decomposes the topic into research domains and searches multiple academic databases in parallel.

How It Works

1. Plan — Breaks your topic into searchable research domains
2. Research — Searches academic databases for each domain, collects and verifies references
3. Outline — Designs the structure of the review based on the collected literature
4. Write — Drafts each section of the review
5. Assemble — Combines sections into a final document with a complete bibliography

Trust model

PhilLit runs as a Claude Code plugin, so its skills, agents, and hooks execute with the same shell privileges as Claude Code itself.