papi-ask

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

Query papers using RAG (PaperQA2 or LEANN). Use when user needs synthesized answers from papers, asks "what does paper X say about Y", or needs cited responses.

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Sourcehummat/paperpipe

Added on2026-06-02

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add hummat/paperpipe papi-ask

SKILL.md Content

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Query Papers via RAG

Use

papi ask

for questions requiring synthesis across papers or cited answers.

Cost-Aware Retrieval

Before using RAG, consider cheaper alternatives:

Exact match:
```
papi search --rg "query"
```
— fast, no LLM
Ranked search:
```
papi search "query"
```
— BM25 ranking
Direct read:
```
papi show <paper> -l eq|tex|summary
```
— if you know the paper

Use

papi ask

only when:

User explicitly requests RAG/synthesis
Question spans multiple papers
Search/show cannot answer

Commands

bash

# PaperQA2 (default) — full RAG with citations
papi ask "question"

# LEANN — faster semantic search + LLM
papi ask "question" --backend leann

# Structured output for programmatic use
papi ask "question" --format evidence-blocks

MCP Tools (if available)

For quick retrieval without full RAG:

```
leann_search(index_name, query, top_k)
```
— fast semantic search
```
retrieve_chunks(query, index_name, k)
```
— PaperQA2 chunks with citations

Check available indexes:

leann_list()

or

list_pqa_indexes()

Output

RAG answers include:

Synthesized response
Citations with page/section references
Confidence indicators

For general CLI commands, see

/papi

.