Syllabus Reading List

Syllabus Reading List is a community plugin from Alireza Rezvani's claude-skills collection (its plugin name is "syllabus"). Give it a course syllabus and it builds a supplementary reading list as a Word document: recent peer-reviewed papers for each part of the course, found through Consensus's academic search, each with a plain-language summary and a discussion question. It isn't made by Consensus. What you can do with it - Hand it a syllabus as a PDF, a Word file, pasted text or a photo of a printed one - Choose the audience (intro or advanced undergraduate, master's, doctoral, professional or mixed) and how recent the papers should be (the last 1, 2 or 5 years) - Check how it groups the course into 6 to 12 sections, then merge, split, add or remove sections before any search runs - Get a .docx with a title page, the course's learning outcomes, and numbered papers for each section, each with a linked title, authors, journal and year - Read summaries pitched at the course's level, and discussion questions that ask students to apply, analyze or evaluate rather than just recall How it works - It comes as a skill, a /cs-syllabus command and a cs-syllabus agent. - It searches Consensus one query at a time, pairing each topic with an applied angle (enzyme kinetics in food processing, say, rather than enzyme kinetics alone). - Every paper has to come from that session's Consensus results. A section with few results is marked as limited rather than padded, and the chat ends with an audit of queries sent, papers received and papers cited. - If the syllabus lists no learning outcomes, it infers a few and marks them as inferred. What it needs - Consensus's MCP server (https://mcp.consensus.app/mcp) connected to your agent. Consensus asks you to sign in, or runs at reduced limits without an account. - Node.js with the docx package (npm install docx), for the bundled document generator. - A way to read the syllabus: a PDF reader, pandoc for Word files, or image reading for photos. How to install it In Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add alirezarezvani/claude-skills, then /plugin install syllabus@claude-code-skills. The author says it also works in Claude.ai with the Consensus connector, code execution and file upload turned on. Good to know - It's a community plugin, not Consensus's or Anthropic's. - It keeps a small search log in ~/.syllabus_sessions/ and saves the reading list where you ask.

• “Create a reading list from this syllabus.”

  Copy

• “Find recent papers for my course.”

  Copy

• “Update my syllabus with recent papers.”

  Copy

• “Any new research on these course topics?”

  Copy

• “Find journal articles for these topics.”

  Copy

• “What recent papers cover this material?”

  Copy