paper-mcp 0.4.0

MCP server that retrieves academic papers by title — metadata, PDF, full text, citations, references.

📄 paper-mcp

An MCP server built with FastMCP that lets Claude (or any LLM) retrieve academic papers by title.
Run it in one command with uvx — no manual install needed.

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✨ Features

5 tools, all taking paper_title as the only argument:

Tool	Returns
paper_get_metadata	Title, authors, abstract, DOI, arXiv ID, citation count, TL;DR, OA status, fields of study
paper_get_pdf	Best open-access PDF URL
paper_get_fulltext	Full plain text (up to 50,000 chars)
paper_get_citations	Up to 100 papers that cite this one
paper_get_references	Up to 100 papers this one cites

Data sources (priority order): Semantic Scholar → arXiv → Unpaywall → Lightpanda browser via gomcp

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🚀 Quick Start

Run without installing (uvx)

# stdio mode — for Claude Desktop / most MCP clients
uvx paper-mcp

# SSE mode — for remote or multi-client setups
uvx paper-mcp --transport sse --port 8000

uvx downloads, installs (in an isolated env), and runs the package — zero setup.

Install permanently

uv tool install paper-mcp
paper-mcp                        # now available globally
paper-mcp --transport sse

Local development

git clone https://github.com/imnotdev25/paper-search
cd paper-search
uv sync                                 # install all deps from pyproject.toml
uv run paper-mcp                 # run directly
uv run paper-mcp --transport sse

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🖥 Claude Desktop Config

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "papers": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paper-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

No Python paths, no venv activation — uvx handles everything.

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🌐 Browser Fallback (gomcp / Lightpanda)

For JS-rendered publisher pages, the server automatically starts a Lightpanda headless browser via gomcp.

One-time setup:

# Download gomcp binary from GitHub releases:
# https://github.com/lightpanda-io/gomcp/releases

# Then download the Lightpanda browser binary:
gomcp download

If gomcp is not installed, the server still works — browser-dependent paths fall back to abstract/metadata gracefully.

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🏗 Architecture

Claude (LLM)
    │  MCP (stdio or SSE)
    ▼
paper-mcp  [FastMCP, Python]
    │
    ├── Semantic Scholar API  ──  metadata, citations, references
    ├── arXiv API + HTML      ──  preprint info + full text
    ├── Unpaywall API         ──  open-access PDF by DOI
    └── gomcp SSE  ───────────── Lightpanda browser (JS fallback)
             │  CDP
             └── Lightpanda Browser (headless)

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📦 Publishing to PyPI

# Build
uv build

# Publish (needs PyPI token)
uv publish --token $PYPI_TOKEN

Once on PyPI, anyone can run it with uvx paper-mcp.

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⚙️ CLI Options

usage: paper-mcp [-h] [--transport {stdio,sse}] [--port PORT] [--host HOST]

options:
  --transport  stdio (default) or sse
  --port       SSE port (default: 8000)
  --host       SSE host (default: 127.0.0.1)

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🔑 Notes

• Semantic Scholar free tier: ~100 req/5 min. For higher throughput, set S2_API_KEY in the environment and add it to the httpx client headers in server.py.
• Unpaywall requires a valid contact email — update UNPAYWALL_EMAIL in server.py.
• Full text is only available for arXiv papers (HTML renderer) and JS-rendered pages reachable via gomcp. Paywalled PDFs require institutional access.

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📁 Project Structure

paper-mcp/
├── pyproject.toml                  ← packaging, entry point, deps
├── README.md
└── src/
    └── paper_mcp/
        ├── __init__.py
        └── server.py               ← all 5 FastMCP tools + main()