Paper Search MCP is a Python tool and Model Context Protocol server for finding, downloading, and extracting text from academic papers across multiple sources. Researchers and AI-driven workflows use it through MCP clients or its command-line interface, with open sources prioritized and optional API keys supported. The catalogue skill provides a way to use the project from a coding-agent workflow.
Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx skills add openags/paper-search-mcp --skill claude-codegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/openags/paper-search-mcpWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/openags/paper-search-mcp/claude-code)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/openags/paper-search-mcp/claude-code"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/openags/paper-search-mcp/claude-code/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/openags/paper-search-mcp/claude-code"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/openags/paper-search-mcp/claude-code.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00062 | $0.01164 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00025 | $0.00466 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00012 | $0.00233 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00006 | $0.00116 |
Grade A, and why
paper-search 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 18d 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.
Copies of this mod
1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:
- paper-search — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 100 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Paper Search
Search, download, and read academic papers via the paper-search CLI.
CLI Usage
All commands run via:
paper-search <command> [args]
If paper-search is not available, install it with uv tool install paper-search-mcp. Optional API keys can be configured in ~/.config/paper-search-mcp/.env.
Search
paper-search search "<query>" -n <max_per_source> -s <sources> -y <year>
-n: results per source (default: 5)-s: comma-separated sources, "fast", "fastest", or "all" (default: all)--exhaustive: compatibility no-op (broad search is already the default); explicit-salways takes precedence-y: year filter for Semantic Scholar (e.g. "2020", "2018-2022")
For speed, use -s fast (OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv, PubMed, Europe PMC; also Semantic Scholar when its API key is nonblank) or -s fastest (OpenAlex and Crossref). Explicit source choices are never expanded, even for DOI queries. Use -s unpaywall for DOI lookup; "all" already includes it. These presets do not enable optional paid sources.
Download PDF
paper-search download <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]
Read (extract text)
paper-search read <source> <paper_id> [-o ./downloads]
List sources
paper-search sources
MCP tools from the CLI
paper-search tool calls the same registered tools as the MCP server, including
source-specific options and DOI lookup. Required arguments are positional;
optional arguments use kebab-case flags. Boolean flags use --flag and
--no-flag; omitted options retain their MCP defaults.
paper-search tool --help
paper-search tool --list # JSON tool list, schemas, and annotations
paper-search tool search_crossref --help
paper-search tool search_crossref "transformer attention" --filter from-pub-date:2024-01-01 --sort published --order desc --max-results 2
paper-search tool get_crossref_paper_by_doi 10.1038/nature12373
paper-search tool search_iacr "cryptography" --no-fetch-details
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.
- 18d ago Changed · +39 lines e09bb3d7f9dc
- 19d ago Changed · +1 lines 3c451b93b50f
- 20d ago Changed 68c4d339d57c
- 1mo ago First seen · 60 lines · 62 tokens per session scan A affddf3a4dc4
paper-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository openags/paper-search-mcp (2,874 stars, last pushed 19d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 62 tokens to every session and 1,164 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.
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