Humanities Skills

A Claude Code skill marketplace for academic research, focused on East Asian historical and geographical data, library catalogs, and scholarly resources.

Skills

Biographical Databases

Skill	Description
cbdb-api	Query the China Biographical Database API — 656K+ historical Chinese figures (7th c. BCE – 19th c. CE)
cbdb-local	Query CBDB locally via SQLite — kinship networks, official postings, social associations, examinations
jbdb-api	Query the Japan Biographical Database API — historical Japanese figures, events, occupations

Historical Geography

Skill	Description
chgis-tgaz	Query CHGIS Temporal Gazetteer API — historical Chinese placenames (222 BCE – 1911 CE)
tgaz-sqlite	Query TGAZ locally via SQLite — 82K+ placenames with spatial and temporal filtering
historical-map	Generate interactive Leaflet.js maps with markers, GeoJSON overlays, and historical tile layers

Calendar & Chronology

Skill	Description
cjk-calendar	Convert between CJK lunisolar calendar dates and Gregorian/Julian dates (~220 BCE – 1945 CE)
historical-timeline	Generate interactive TimelineJS3 timelines with BCE/CE support, eras, and media

Library Catalogs

Skill	Description
columbia-clio	Search Columbia University Libraries' CLIO catalog via Blacklight JSON API
harvard-library-catalog	Search Harvard Library's 13M+ records via LibraryCloud and PRESTO
hathitrust-catalog	Look up HathiTrust's 17M+ digitized volumes by ISBN, OCLC, LCCN, or ISSN
loc-catalog	Search Library of Congress digital collections — books, photos, maps, manuscripts, newspapers
nlb-singapore	Search National Library Board Singapore catalog — availability, new arrivals, checkout trends

Scholarly Resources

Skill	Description
arxiv-search	Search arXiv preprints — field-specific queries, boolean logic, date filtering, bulk retrieval
europeana-collections	Search Europeana's 50M+ cultural heritage items from 4,000+ European institutions
wikidata-search	Search Wikidata via keyword, semantic/hybrid search, SPARQL, and direct entity retrieval
zotero-local	Interact with local Zotero 8 desktop via HTTP API — search, fetch, add, organize references

Setup

Install as a Claude Code skill marketplace:

{
  "skills": [
    "$HOME/skill-hub/humanities-skills/cbdb-api/SKILL.md"
  ]
}

Or use the skill-router to auto-discover and install skills as needed.

Conventions

• UTF-8 for all Chinese/Japanese characters — never URL-encode CJK text
• Rate-limit API requests (0.5–1s between calls)
• User-Agent headers with contact info (required by Wikidata)

Structure

Each skill follows:

skill-name/
├── SKILL.md              # YAML frontmatter + instructions
├── references/           # API specs, command references
│   └── api_reference.md
└── scripts/              # Optional utility code