wikicitation-mcp 0.3.0

MCP server providing Wikipedia citation-science tools for Claude — pure Python, no R required

wikilite MCP Server

Bring Wikipedia citation science into your Claude conversations.

An MCP server that wraps the wikilite R package and exposes ~50 tools to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and claude.ai.
Ask Claude to fetch Wikipedia edit histories, analyse citations, score scientific quality, annotate DOIs, and generate interactive visualisations — all without leaving the chat.

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What you can do

Category	Examples
Edit history	Full revision history, first/latest wikitext, category-wide sweeps
Citation analysis	Count DOIs/refs/ISBNs, extract CS1 templates, compute SciScore
DOI & ISBN annotation	Enrich DOIs via CrossRef / EuropePMC / Altmetric; books via Google Books
Static plots	Article creation timeline, citation distribution, page views/edits (PNG)
Interactive plots	Publication network, co-citation network, wikilink network (HTML)

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Prerequisites

Tool	Minimum version	Notes
Python	3.10
uv	latest	replaces pip/venv
R	4.0
wikilite	latest	installed in R

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Setup

1 — Install uv

# macOS / Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

2 — Install wikilite in R

# In an R console
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("jsobel1/wikilite")

# Required for CrossRef DOI annotation (annotate_dois_crossref, annotate_dois_bibtex)
install.packages("bibtex")

# Optional: for static PNG plots
install.packages("base64enc")

# Optional: for interactive HTML plots
install.packages("htmlwidgets")

3 — Clone and install Python dependencies

git clone https://github.com/jsobel1/wikicitation-mcp.git
cd wikicitation-mcp
uv sync

4 — Verify the bridge works

macOS / Linux (bash):

echo '{"tool":"get_doi_count","args":{"text":"doi:10.1038/nature12373"}}' | Rscript mcp_interface.R
# -> {"count":1}

Windows (PowerShell):

'{"tool":"get_doi_count","args":{"text":"doi:10.1038/nature12373"}}' | Rscript mcp_interface.R
# -> {"count":1}

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Connect to Claude

Claude Code (CLI)

# Run this from inside the wikicitation-mcp/ directory — uv needs to find pyproject.toml
cd /path/to/wikicitation-mcp
claude mcp add wikilite -- uv run python server.py

# Confirm
claude mcp list
# wikilite    stdio    uv run python server.py

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/.claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wikilite": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "run", "python",
        "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/wikicitation-mcp/server.py"
      ],
      "env": {
        "R_HOME": "/usr/lib/R"
      }
    }
  }
}

Find R_HOME with: Rscript -e "R.home()"

Restart Claude Desktop — the wikilite server appears in the toolbar.

claude.ai (web, HTTP)

# Start HTTP server
uv run fastmcp run server.py --transport streamable-http --port 8000

# Then in claude.ai -> Settings -> Connections -> Add MCP server
# URL: http://localhost:8000/mcp

For remote access expose with a tunnel:

ngrok http 8000
# Use the https://xxx.ngrok.io/mcp URL in claude.ai

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Quick start

Once connected, try these prompts in Claude:

Fetch all edits to the Wikipedia article "Circadian clock" up to today.

Count all DOIs, references, and ISBNs in this wikitext: [paste wikitext]

Calculate the SciScore for the Wikipedia article "Sleep deprivation".

Extract all citations from "CRISPR" and tell me how many are journal
articles vs websites vs books.

Show me the top 20 most-cited papers in the Wikipedia article "mRNA vaccine".

Annotate these DOIs with CrossRef metadata:
10.1038/nature12373, 10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.001

Generate a creation timeline chart for these articles:
Zeitgeber, Advanced sleep phase disorder, Delayed sleep phase disorder,
Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder

Build an interactive publication network for all articles in
Category:Chronobiology using the top 50 DOIs.

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Usage examples

Get article edit history

Get the edit history of "Alzheimer's disease" up to 2024-01-01.

→ Returns a table of revisions: timestamp, editor, edit size, comment.

Note: date_limit is the upper (newest) date bound — it controls how recent the results go, not how far back. To retrieve edits "since 2023", pass today's date as the limit and filter the results by timestamp.

Score citation quality (SciScore)

What is the SciScore of "Long COVID"?

→ Returns sci_score (fraction of DOI citations) and sci_score2 (fraction of peer-reviewed citations).

Annotate DOIs from an article

1. Get the most recent wikitext of "Parkinson's disease"
2. Extract all DOIs
3. Annotate them with EuropePMC to get titles, journals, and citation counts

Interactive co-citation network

Build a co-citation network for:
COVID-19, COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccine
Show pairs that share at least 3 DOIs.

→ Returns a self-contained interactive HTML network you can open in a browser.

Revert trend analysis

How many edits were reverted on Wikipedia between 2023-01-01 and 2023-12-31?

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Tool reference

Group 1 — History & metadata (14 tools)

Tool	Key arguments	Returns
get_article_history	article_name, date_limit	revision table
get_article_recent	article_name, date_limit	metadata + wikitext
get_article_initial	article_name	metadata + wikitext
get_article_info	article_name	pageid, size, title
get_tables_all	article_name, date_limit	all tables in one call
get_category_pages	category	page name list
get_pages_in_cat_table	category	page table
get_subcat_table	catname	direct subcategories
get_subcat_multiple	catname_list	subcategories for N categories
get_subcat_with_depth	catname, depth	recursive subcategories
get_page_in_cat_multiple	catname_list	pages for N categories
get_category_history	article_list, date_limit	revision table
get_category_recent	article_list, date_limit	metadata + wikitext list
get_category_creation	article_list	creation revision table

Group 2 — Citation counting, extraction & quality (19 tools)

Tool	Key arguments	Returns
get_doi_count	text	{count}
get_ref_count	text	{count}
get_url_count	text	{count}
get_isbn_count	text	{count}
get_hyperlink_count	text	{count}
get_any_count	text, regexp	{count}
extract_citations	text	list of CS1 templates
extract_wikihypelinks	text	list of [[...]] links
replace_wikihypelinks	text	cleaned text
parse_cite_type	text	parsed CS1 fields
extract_with_regex	article_name, regexp, date_limit	matches table
extract_all_regex	article_name, date_limit	all regex matches
parse_citations	article_name, date_limit	structured citation table
parse_all_citations	article_name, date_limit	full long-form table
get_citation_types	article_name, date_limit	counts by type
get_source_type_counts	text	counts from raw text
get_sci_score	article_name, date_limit	sci_score, sci_score2
get_top_cited_papers	article_name, date_limit	top 40 DOIs
get_revert_counts	start, end	revert statistics

Group 3 — DOI & ISBN annotation (7 tools)

Tool	Key arguments	Returns
annotate_dois_europmc	doi_list	EuropePMC metadata
annotate_dois_crossref	doi_list	CrossRef metadata (requires bibtex R package)
annotate_dois_altmetric	doi_list	Altmetric scores (requires rAltmetric)
annotate_dois_bibtex	doi_list	BibTeX entries (requires bibtex R package)
annotate_isbn_google	isbn	Google Books metadata
annotate_isbn_openlib	isbn	Open Library metadata
annotate_isbns_altmetric	isbn_list	Altmetric scores (requires rAltmetric)

Group 4 — Static PNG plots (6 tools)

Tool	Key arguments
plot_article_creation	article_list, title, cumsum
plot_static_timeline	article_list
plot_citation_distribution	article_list
plot_top_source	article_name, source_type, date_limit
plot_page_views	article_name, start, end
plot_page_edits	article_name, start, end

Group 5 — Interactive HTML plots (4 tools)

Tool	Key arguments
plot_interactive_timeline	article_list, date_limit, color_by
plot_publication_network	article_list, top_n_dois, min_wiki_count, annotate
plot_cocitation_network	article_list, min_shared_dois
plot_wikilink_network	article_list, only_internal, top_n_links

Interactive tools return {"html": "<self-contained HTML>", "format": "html", "description": "..."}.

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Running tests

# Unit tests — no R, no network required
uv run pytest tests/ -m "not integration" -v

# Integration tests — require R + wikilite + internet
uv run pytest tests/ -m integration -v

# All tests
uv run pytest tests/ -v

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Troubleshooting

Rscript not found

macOS / Linux — add R to your shell profile:

export PATH="/usr/bin:$PATH"          # or /opt/homebrew/bin on macOS

Windows — add R to your user PATH permanently (PowerShell, run once, then reopen PowerShell):

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable(
  "Path",
  $env:Path + ";C:\Program Files\R\R-4.2.3\bin",
  "User"
)

Or use the full path without modifying PATH at all:

'{"tool":"get_doi_count","args":{"text":"test"}}' | & "C:\Program Files\R\R-4.2.3\bin\Rscript.exe" mcp_interface.R

Find your installed R version with: Get-ChildItem "C:\Program Files\R"

wikilite not found in R

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("jsobel1/wikilite")

htmlwidgets not found (interactive plot tools)

install.packages("htmlwidgets")

Please install bibtex (CrossRef annotation tools)

install.packages("bibtex")

Timeout on large edit histories
Increase DEFAULT_TIMEOUT in r_bridge.py (default: 120 s).

Server not appearing in Claude Code

claude mcp remove wikilite
claude mcp add wikilite -- uv run python server.py
claude mcp list

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Related

• wikilite R package — the underlying R package
• Model Context Protocol — MCP specification
• FastMCP — Python MCP framework used here