paper-search-cli

A CLI tool for searching and downloading academic papers from 20+ sources. Also works as a Claude Code Skill for AI-assisted research.

Features

• 20+ academic sources: arXiv, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, CrossRef, OpenAlex, CORE, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and more
• Concurrent search: searches multiple sources in parallel with automatic deduplication
• Smart download: multi-stage fallback chain (source -> OA repositories -> Unpaywall -> Sci-Hub)
• PDF text extraction: download and extract text from papers in one step
• JSON output: machine-readable output for scripting and AI integration
• Claude Code Skill: use as a slash command in Claude Code

Installation

pip

pip install paper-search-cli

uv

uv tool install paper-search-cli

From source

git clone https://github.com/openags/paper-search-cli.git
cd paper-search-cli
uv sync

Docker

docker build -t paper-search .
docker run paper-search search "transformer architecture"

Usage

Search papers

# Search all sources
paper-search search "transformer architecture"

# Search specific sources
paper-search search "quantum computing" --sources arxiv,semantic --max-results 5

# Filter by year (Semantic Scholar)
paper-search search "large language models" --sources semantic --year 2023-2024

# JSON output (for scripting / AI tools)
paper-search search "CRISPR" --json

Download a paper

paper-search download 2106.12345 --source arxiv
paper-search download 2106.12345 --source arxiv --output-dir ./papers

Download with fallback chain

paper-search download-fallback 2106.12345 --source arxiv \
  --doi 10.48550/arXiv.2106.12345 --title "Paper Title"

Read (download + extract text)

paper-search read 2106.12345 --source arxiv

List available sources

paper-search sources

Claude Code Skill

This tool can be used as a Claude Code Skill for AI-assisted academic research.

Setup

Copy the skill file to your project:

mkdir -p .claude/commands
cp claude-skill/paper-search.md .claude/commands/paper-search.md

Or for global access (all projects):

mkdir -p ~/.claude/commands
cp claude-skill/paper-search.md ~/.claude/commands/paper-search.md

Then in Claude Code, use:

/paper-search transformer architecture in NLP

Available Sources

Environment Variables

All environment variables are optional. Set them in a .env file or export them.

Legacy PAPER_SEARCH_MCP_* prefix is also supported for backward compatibility.

License

MIT