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Do a literature review faster

“I have to review the research on a topic for a paper or thesis.”

AI can search, screen and summarize papers into a table and help draft the review. Every citation must be real — check each one exists and says what the AI claims.

Fix it yourself in 3 steps

Write your research question and inclusion rules (years, study types).
Ask the AI to find and screen papers, with a table of what each found.
Verify every citation and read key papers yourself before writing.

Copy this prompt

Research question: [question]. Include: [years, study types, fields]. Find relevant papers, screen them against my rules, and make a table: citation, DOI/link, method, sample, main finding, limitation. List excluded papers with reasons. Only include papers you can link to. Stop after the table.

Fill in the [brackets]. Each prompt says when the AI should stop, so it doesn't wander off.

Agents people used for this: Claude Code, ChatGPT Agent, Claude, Cursor.

Inspired by real examples collected at agentusecases.ai.

📚 13 real stories of people doing this with AI agents

Compile an annotated bibliography and draft a paper · ChatGPT Agent
Draft a dissertation lit review from uploaded sources · custom-built or unnamed agent
Give a coding agent a paper corpus to find new techniques · Claude Code
Orchestrate academic research and writing workflows · Claude Code
Research and download scientific papers with a browser agent · custom-built or unnamed agent
Research and draft a social science paper with Deep Research · ChatGPT Agent
Run a systematic literature review from one prompt · custom-built or unnamed agent
Run academic literature reviews from seed papers · custom-built or unnamed agent
Run systematic literature reviews with a research agent · custom-built or unnamed agent
Search literature and write notes into Zotero · Claude
Speed up a thesis literature review · ChatGPT
Summarize non-obvious methods file by file in a paper project · Claude Code
Use Cursor for academic paper writing with citations · Cursor

Collected at AgentUseCases.ai.

Check every citation yourself, strip student and personal names before pasting work in, and treat AI findings as leads to verify.

Tools for this

#1 · Our pick

Grok Bot

Best for: Chores that repeat — done for you

The easiest AI helper for everyday people: show it a chore once — a morning brief, checking a bill, watching for a refund — and it keeps doing it while you're away, checking in only when it needs your OK. Works from the Grok app on your phone and computer (beta).

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ChatGPT

Best for: Widest feature set

OpenAI's assistant with the broadest feature set: voice, images, search and a large app ecosystem.

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Gemini

Best for: Google Workspace users

Google's assistant, woven into Gmail, Docs and Android. Strongest if you live in Google's apps.

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Claude

Best for: Writing, analysis, code

Anthropic's assistant: strong writing, analysis and coding, with projects and artifacts for longer work.

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Claude Code

Best for: Serious work on real repos

Anthropic's agent for your terminal, IDE and desktop. Reads the whole repo, runs commands and tests, and handles large multi-file changes well.

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Cursor

Best for: Editor-first developers

A VS Code-style editor built around AI, with background agents. The comfortable choice if you live in an editor.

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Grok

Best for: Real-time info, everywhere you go

xAI's assistant with real-time X data — on iPhone, Android, desktop, the web, X, and built into Tesla cars. Want it to do chores on its own? See Grok Bot.

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Perplexity

Best for: Research with citations

An answer engine that searches the web and cites its sources. Built for research questions.

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