paperhound 0.1.2

CLI to search, download, and convert academic papers (arXiv, Semantic Scholar) into Markdown — built for AI/ML researchers.

paperhound

paperhound — sniff out academic papers from the command line.

A small, fast CLI for AI/ML researchers who want a single tool to search, inspect, download, and convert to Markdown papers from arXiv and Semantic Scholar. Conversion is powered by docling, so the resulting Markdown is good enough to feed straight into an LLM context.

Features

• 🔎 Unified search — one query, all backends. arXiv and Semantic Scholar are queried in parallel and the results are merged and deduplicated.
• 📄 Inspect before downloading — paperhound show <id> prints the abstract and metadata so you can decide if it's worth a download.
• ⬇️ Download by identifier — arXiv id, DOI, Semantic Scholar paper id, or any paper URL. Open-access PDFs are resolved automatically.
• 📝 PDF → Markdown via docling — paperhound convert paper.pdf or paperhound get <id> for the full pipeline.
• 🤖 Agent-ready — ships with a SKILL.md and JSON output mode so any Claude / OpenAI / local agent can drive the CLI.
• 🧪 Heavily tested — every module has unit tests; live integration tests are gated behind an environment variable.

Installation

pip install paperhound

or with uv:

uv tool install paperhound

Python 3.10+ is required. Docling pulls in PyTorch on first run, so the very first conversion may take a moment to download model weights.

Quick start

# Search across all providers
paperhound search "diffusion transformers" --limit 5

# Show the abstract for a specific paper
paperhound show 2401.12345
paperhound show 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2          # DOI works too
paperhound show https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762   # ...and URLs

# Download the PDF
paperhound download 1706.03762 -o ./papers/

# Convert a local PDF to Markdown
paperhound convert ./papers/1706.03762.pdf -o attention.md

# Or do it all at once: search-resolve, download, convert, clean up
paperhound get 1706.03762 -o attention.md

JSON output for scripts and agents

paperhound search "graph neural networks" --json | jq '.[].title'
paperhound show 1706.03762 --json

Commands

Command	Description
paperhound search <query>	Run a unified search. --limit, --source arxiv|semantic_scholar, --year-min, --year-max, --json.
paperhound show <id>	Fetch a paper's metadata + abstract.
paperhound download <id> -o <path>	Download a paper PDF.
paperhound convert <pdf> -o <md>	Convert a PDF (or any docling-supported file/URL) to Markdown.
paperhound get <id> -o <md>	Download + convert in one step. --keep-pdf to keep the PDF.
paperhound version	Print the installed version.

Run paperhound <command> --help for full options.

Identifier formats

paperhound accepts whatever you have on hand:

• arXiv ids: 2401.12345, 2401.12345v3, cs.AI/0301001, arXiv:2401.12345
• DOIs: 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2, doi:10.1038/...
• Semantic Scholar paper ids: 40-char hex
• URLs: arxiv.org/abs/..., arxiv.org/pdf/..., doi.org/..., semanticscholar.org/paper/...

Configuration

Env var	Purpose
SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY	Optional. Every Semantic Scholar Graph API endpoint we use (/paper/search, /paper/{paper_id}) is reachable anonymously, but the unauthenticated quota is shared globally and 429s are common; the provider retries them automatically. Set this to your own key for steadier throughput.

Use it from agents

paperhound is designed to be driven by AI agents. The repo ships a ready-to-install skill at skills/paperhound/SKILL.md that documents every command, recommends the JSON output flag, and gives an end-to-end example.

Install it into Claude Code (or any skills.sh-compatible agent) with one command:

npx skills add alexfdez1010/paperhound

This uses the skills CLI to discover the SKILL.md under skills/paperhound/ and place it in your agent's skill directory (~/.claude/skills/paperhound/ for Claude Code). Pass -a <agent> to target a specific agent (e.g. -a claude-code, -a opencode).

Development

make install            # uv sync --extra dev
make test               # unit tests (network-free, respx-mocked)
make test-integration   # live API tests — always live, no env-var gate
make test-all           # unit + integration
make check              # lint + format check + unit tests (run before pushing)

Unit tests use respx to mock HTTP, so they never touch the network. Integration tests under tests/integration/ always hit the real arXiv and Semantic Scholar APIs — no env-var gate, no mocks. The SemanticScholarProvider retries 429s with exponential backoff so the S2 suite is robust to the public shared rate limit; export SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY only if you want faster runs.

Releasing to PyPI

1. Bump version in pyproject.toml and paperhound/__init__.py.
2. Tag the release: git tag v0.1.1 && git push --tags.
3. The Publish to PyPI GitHub Action builds and publishes via PyPI Trusted Publishing — no API token required, just configure the trusted publisher once on PyPI.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.