retrieval-mcp

An MCP server for the Retrieval academic-paper API - semantic paper search, document matching, ACE journal memory, and index inventory. Self-contained: it talks to the backend over HTTP only (just mcp + httpx), so it installs anywhere with uvx / pip - no repo checkout, no GPU, no models.

By default it targets the compute box on the lab LAN (http://10.100.100.111:8000), which trusts LAN callers so no key is needed. Off-LAN, point RETRIEVAL_API_URL at the public gateway (https://retrieval.rnarket.com) and set RETRIEVAL_API_KEY (sk-...).

Tools

Every tool's full docstring (purpose + each argument with its default + an example) is what your LLM sees - call them by name. Summary:

Paper retrieval

Tool What it does
search_papers Semantic hybrid search over 95k+ top-venue CS papers (filters: venue, year, title_only)
search_within_paper Every matching passage inside one paper
match_document / match_paper Content-nearest papers to a passage / to a paper
list_conferences / corpus_stats Venue registry / corpus size

Journal work-memory (scoped to the current project by default)

Tool What it does
journal_record Record a work note (memory) or a file's current content (doc, latest-wins)
journal_search Search memory - keyword (FTS5, no embedding) or hybrid/dense/sparse
journal_recent List recent entries
journal_index_dir Batch-index a local dir's files into the journal (latest-wins per file)

Code KB (source stays local - only chunks are uploaded)

Tool What it does
index_code AST-chunk a repo locally (40+ languages) and index it, scoped to you
search_code Semantic code search with path:line citations
index_inventory Your indexed-file tree: user -> host -> project -> dir -> file

ACE playbook (accumulated, curated lessons per project)

Tool What it does
ace_context_aware / ace_playbook Retrieve relevant / list all curated bullets
ace_enhance_prompt / ace_smart_generate Attach playbook lessons to a prompt (no LLM call)
ace_smart_reflect Curate a transferable lesson into the playbook (grow-and-refine dedup)

Code KB language coverage

index_code chunks 40+ languages structurally via tree-sitter (chonkie CodeChunker): Python, TypeScript/TSX/JS/JSX (React), Java, Kotlin (incl. Jetpack Compose .kt/.kts), Swift, Go, Rust, C/C++, C#, Ruby, PHP, Lua, Scala, Dart, R, Julia, Elixir, Erlang, Haskell, OCaml, SQL, GraphQL, Protobuf, HTML, CSS/SCSS (Tailwind = CSS classes), Vue, Svelte, shell, PowerShell, Dockerfile, Terraform/HCL, CMake, YAML/JSON/TOML/XML, and more. Grammarless config/text files fall back to line-window chunks; docs (.md) and binaries are skipped (docs belong in the journal via journal_index_dir).

Install

Claude Code

# LAN (no key):
claude mcp add retrieval -- uvx --from retrieval-mcp==0.2.32 retrieval-mcp
# Off-LAN (public gateway + key):
claude mcp add retrieval \
  --env RETRIEVAL_API_URL=https://retrieval.rnarket.com \
  --env RETRIEVAL_API_KEY=sk-... \
  -- uvx --from retrieval-mcp==0.2.32 retrieval-mcp

Claude Desktop / any MCP client

claude_desktop_config.json (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/, Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "retrieval": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "retrieval-mcp==0.2.32", "retrieval-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "RETRIEVAL_API_URL": "https://retrieval.rnarket.com",
        "RETRIEVAL_API_KEY": "sk-..."
      }
    }
  }
}

No uv? pip install retrieval-mcp then use "command": "retrieval-mcp".

Automatic code-index refresh

index_code(..., auto_refresh=True) persists the local scan policy for that absolute repository path. Later search_code() calls check file SHA-256 hashes in the background and submit an incremental refresh only when files changed or disappeared. Search does not wait for GPU indexing: it returns the last completed snapshot and reports the refresh job.

Git repositories continue to honor Git's ignore rules by default. Any directory, including non-Git projects, can add scope-relative patterns to .retrievalignore; callers can add temporary patterns with exclude_globs=["generated/**", "private.py"]. Explicit delete_code() cancels/fences stale refresh work and removes vectors, inventory, and the saved refresh policy.

Config (env)

Var Default Notes
RETRIEVAL_API_URL http://10.100.100.111:8000 LAN compute box (no key). Off-LAN, set to https://retrieval.rnarket.com.
RETRIEVAL_API_KEY - sk-... key for the gateway (create under /auth/keys). Required off-LAN.
Journal/code scope current absolute directory path The client derives scope from the directory you run or pass to each tool, so projects do not leak into each other.

License

MIT

Project links

Key dates

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
  • Released:
Newer release available (0.4.11)

1 maintainer

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
Avatar for Ironbox4pip from gravatar.com Ironbox4pip

License

MIT

Requires

Python >=3.10

Tags

ace code-search llm mcp model-context-protocol papers retrieval search

Report project as malware

Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

retrieval_mcp-0.2.32.tar.gz (33.7 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

retrieval_mcp-0.2.32-py3-none-any.whl (34.3 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file retrieval_mcp-0.2.32.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: retrieval_mcp-0.2.32.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 33.7 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: uv/0.8.15

File hashes

Hashes for retrieval_mcp-0.2.32.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 df6cb2d92efeeec1cbc24a716cf75aa03a2baf309bd4bbb78e55f5063a4c6a1f
MD5 45fc8c9a86cf16f749a56fcaa97b0625
BLAKE2b-256 9a138ab376b0d4de293c2ef9b9162c0762c139872064ff8230058e143f869a13

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file retrieval_mcp-0.2.32-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for retrieval_mcp-0.2.32-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 b557703e7c698dcb5694e7da7b5b7b25ececc241a39defde8b66238720ba68a3
MD5 367c196b32ee9d6fac439ac86b66c352
BLAKE2b-256 6f5a6a309935aa4695f4cccefc4788fd460c5b2e25e14a84dc4b3fd9357644b1

See more details on using hashes here.

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

0.4.11

2 files

0.4.10

2 files

0.4.9

2 files

0.4.8

2 files

0.4.7

2 files

0.4.6

2 files

0.4.5

2 files

0.4.4

2 files

0.4.3

2 files

0.4.2

2 files

0.4.1

2 files

0.4.0

2 files

0.3.2

1 file

0.3.1

2 files

0.3.0

2 files

0.2.37

2 files

0.2.36

2 files

0.2.35

2 files

0.2.34

2 files

0.2.33

2 files

This release

0.2.32 This release

2 files

0.2.31

2 files

0.2.30

2 files

0.2.29

2 files

0.2.28

2 files

0.2.27

2 files

0.2.26

2 files

0.2.25

2 files

0.2.24

2 files

0.2.23

2 files

0.2.22

2 files

0.2.21

2 files

0.2.20

2 files

0.2.19

2 files

0.2.18

2 files

0.2.17

2 files

0.2.16

2 files

0.2.15

2 files

0.2.14

2 files

0.2.13

2 files

0.2.12

2 files

0.2.11

2 files

0.2.10

2 files

0.2.9

2 files

0.2.8

2 files

0.2.7

2 files

0.2.6

2 files

0.2.5

2 files

0.2.4

2 files

0.2.3

2 files

0.2.2

2 files

0.2.1

2 files

0.2.0

2 files

0.1.2

2 files

0.1.1

2 files

0.1.0

2 files

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page