Read Arxiv Paper

You will be given a URL of an arxiv paper, for example:

https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2601.07372

Part 1: Normalize the URL

The goal is to fetch the TeX Source of the paper (not the PDF!), the URL always looks like this:

https://www.arxiv.org/src/2601.07372

Notice the /src/ in the url. Once you have the URL:

Part 2: Download the paper source

Fetch the url to a local .tar.gz file. A good location is ~/.cache/nanochat/knowledge/{arxiv_id}.tar.gz.

(If the file already exists, there is no need to re-download it).

Part 3: Unpack the file in that folder

Unpack the contents into ~/.cache/nanochat/knowledge/{arxiv_id} directory.

Part 4: Locate the entrypoint

Every latex source usually has an entrypoint, such as main.tex or something like that.

Part 5: Read the paper

Once you've found the entrypoint, Read the contents and then recurse through all other relevant source files to read the paper.

Part 6: Report

Once you've read the paper, produce a summary of the paper into a markdown file at ./knowledge/summary_{tag}.md. Notice that 1) use the local knowledge directory here (it's easier for me to open and reference here), not in ~/.cache, and 2) generate some reasonable tag like e.g. conditional_memory or whatever seems appropriate given the paper. Probably make sure that the tag doesn't exist yet so you're not overwriting files.

As for the summary itself, remember that you're processing this paper within the context of the nanochat repository, so most often we will be interested in how to apply the paper and its lessons to the nanochat project. Therefore, you should feel free to "remind yourself" of the related nanochat code by reading the relevant parts, and then explicitly make the connection of how this paper might relate to nanochat or what are things we might be inspired about or try.