citekick

Agentic tools for academic paper search — a CLI and MCP server that query multiple literature sources in one shot.

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Why citekick?

Finding papers usually means juggling separate APIs, rate limits, and response formats for every source. citekick unifies them behind a single interface:

• Multi-source search — Query 8 sources in parallel: Semantic Scholar, arXiv, PubMed, Crossref, Europe PMC, OpenReview, DBLP, and OpenAlex.
• CLI + MCP — Use it directly from your terminal (citekick) or expose it to AI agents as an MCP server (citekick-mcp).
• Agent-friendly output — JSON or Markdown results, ready to be consumed by humans or LLMs.
• Response caching — Built-in HTTP cache to stay polite with APIs and speed up repeated queries.
• Configurable defaults — API keys, preferred sources, year ranges, and output format persisted in one TOML file.

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Installation

Install the citekick CLI and MCP server globally using uv:

# Install with uv (recommended)
uv tool install citekick

# Or with pip
pip install citekick

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CLI Usage

1. citekick search

Search academic literature across multiple sources.

citekick search "attention is all you need"                    # Search all default sources
citekick search "diffusion models" --sources arxiv,openalex    # Restrict to specific sources
citekick search "protein folding" --year-from 2023 --format markdown
citekick search "llm agents" --max-results 20 --no-cache

Tip: the search subcommand is optional — citekick "query" works too.

2. citekick config

Configure API keys and default search settings in ~/.config/citekick/config.toml.

citekick config                                    # Create an empty config file
citekick config --mailto you@example.com           # Set contact email (polite-pool access)
citekick config --openalex-api-key KEY --sources arxiv,pubmed

Credentials and optional contact email are read from ~/.config/citekick/config.toml. The [api] values are all optional; missing or empty values leave the corresponding source keyless.

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Agent Integration

To use citekick as an MCP server, add this to your agent's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "citekick": {
      "command": "citekick-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or using uvx (without prior installation):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "citekick": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "citekick", "citekick-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

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Development

# Install hatch
uv tool install hatch

# Run full release check (linting, static typing with mypy, and test suite with coverage)
hatch run release

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License

MIT