openalex-mcp: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md

openalex-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for Claude Code from NimaZahediN/openalex-mcp. It costs 371 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of instructions for building and maintaining an OpenAlex MCP server. OpenAlex is a free database of scholarly research, and MCP is a standard way for AI applications to use external tools.

In plain words
What is it for?
It guides work on research-search and public-data analysis tools, including scholarly network and open-source intelligence tasks.
Why use it?
It keeps development decisions and project conventions in one place, so contributors know how the server should be built and documented.

Instructions file for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: the file is CLAUDE.md. Also seen: mentions Claude Code.

This is NimaZahediN/openalex-mcp's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on openalex-mcp itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything openalex-mcp configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to NimaZahediN/openalex-mcp. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NimaZahediN/openalex-mcp/main/CLAUDE.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NimaZahediN/openalex-mcp

Made for: Claude Code.

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README.md
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Per session 371 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 371 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00371 $0.00371
Opus 5 $0.00186 $0.00186
Sonnet 5 $0.00074 $0.00074
Haiku 4.5 $0.00037 $0.00037

Measured 11d ago against content hash 6b438fb1f7c7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

openalex-mcp CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 29 lines

What it actually says

Instructions

  • Never use emojis in your code
  • Always use modern dependency management tools like uv or uvx
  • Always use Context7 instead of WebFetch for researching technical documentation and frameworks
  • Avoid using phrases like 'Generated with Claude Code' in commit messages. Instead, make the commit look like it was written naturally by a person.

Key technical decisions and patterns:

  • Used FastMCP framework for MCP server implementation
  • No authentication required - OpenAlex is completely free and open
  • Created modular architecture with separate concerns (client, models, utils, server)
  • Used UV for modern Python dependency management
  • Implemented both standard and OSINT-focused tools
  • Focus on research intelligence and network analysis use cases
  • Added email support for "polite pool" better rate limits

Key Technical Concepts:

  • FastMCP: Python framework for building MCP servers and clients
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP): Standardized protocol for AI-application integration
  • OpenAlex: Free scholarly database with 240M+ works, no API key required
  • OSINT: Open Source Intelligence gathering from public scholarly data
  • httpx: Modern async HTTP client for Python
  • Pydantic: Data validation with BaseModel for type-safe models
  • Citation Networks: Mapping research influence through citations
  • Collaboration Networks: Tracking co-authorship and institutional partnerships
  • Temporal Analysis: Time-series research trends
  • Funding Intelligence: Tracking research grants and funders
  • Entity IDs: W-numbers for works, A-numbers for authors, I-numbers for institutions
  • Rate Limits: 100K requests/day, 10 req/sec (generous limits)
  • Polite Pool: Better performance by adding email to requests
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 29 lines · 371 tokens per session scan A 6b438fb1f7c7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

openalex-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository NimaZahediN/openalex-mcp (0 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 371 tokens to every session, about $0.0019 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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