iamsikun/finch

**Finch** is a paper-reading skill for LLM agents. It helps you understand an academic paper
well enough to use its ideas:
- **Reconstruct the argument:** what the paper states, assumes, estimates, or proves,
with locations in the version actually read.
- **Explain the central idea:** what obstacle it overcomes, which ingredient does the
work, and why that ingredient works.
- **Situate it in the literature:** a small verified neighborhood of foundations,
predecessors, alternatives, and later work, compared on concrete dimensions.
It covers economics, finance, business, statistics, econometrics, machine learning, and
experimental science. Contribution-type guides load only when relevant.
Finch follows the open Agent Skills format, so the
same skills/finch/ folder works in Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, GitHub
Copilot, OpenCode, and other compatible agents.
Install
Install once and Finch keeps itself current. Releases come from the stable branch,
so work in progress never reaches your agents.
**Any agent (recommended):**
This one command:
- clones Finch to ~/.local/share/finch;
- links the skill into every agent it detects (~/.claude/skills, the shared
~/.agents/skills read by Codex, Gemini CLI and Cursor, Copilot, OpenCode);
- schedules a daily background update (launchd on macOS, cron on Linux);
- adds a finch command (linked into ~/.local/bin) for status, updates, and uninstalling.
Updates only ever fast-forward to new releases, are skipped quietly when offline, and
never touch a copy you have edited. Restart your agent after installing.
Add --no-auto-update to the install command (... | bash -s -- --no-auto-update) to
manage updates yourself. If you'd rather read the script before running it, clone the
repo and run ./install.sh.
**Claude Code: plugin marketplace.** This is the alternative to the installer for
Claude Code users; use one or the other, not both.
Then turn on auto-update: /plugin → **Marketplaces** → **finch** → **Enable
auto-update**. Third-party marketplaces have it off by default. Claude Code then picks up
each new release on its own.
**Other options:**
- **skills CLI:** npx skills add iamsikun/finch -g installs into the agents it
detects. Update with the CLI's update command, which npx skills --help lists.
- **Manual:** symlink skills/finch from a clone into your agent's skills folder, then
git pull to update.
| Agent | User-level path | Project-level path |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | ~/.claude/skills/finch | .claude/skills/finch |
| Codex | ~/.agents/skills/finch | .agents/skills/finch |
| Gemini CLI | ~/.gemini/skills/finch or ~/.agents/skills/finch | .gemini/skills/finch or .agents/skills/finch |
| Cursor | ~/.cursor/skills/finch or ~/.agents/skills/finch | .cursor/skills/finch or .agents/skills/finch |
See CHANGELOG.md for what changed in each release.
Use
Agents should pick up Finch automatically when you ask them to read or explain a paper. You