research-mcp

MCP server for searching and retrieving papers from arXiv, including full-text PDF extraction.

Features

• search_arxiv: Search papers by keyword, author, category, and/or date range
• search_papers: Quick search by query text with optional category and date filters
• get_paper: Fetch full metadata (title, authors, abstract, PDF link) for a specific arXiv ID
• get_recent: Get the most recent papers in a given category
• fetch_pdf: Download and extract full text from a paper's PDF by arXiv ID

Available Tools

Tool	Inputs	Returns
search_arxiv	keyword, author, category, date_from, date_to, max_results, start	Numbered list of papers with title, ID, authors, date, PDF link
search_papers	query, category, max_results, date_from	Numbered list of matching papers with title, ID, authors, date, PDF link
get_paper	arxiv_id	Title, ID, authors, published date, abstract, PDF URL
get_recent	category, max_results	Numbered list of recent papers with title, ID, authors, date, PDF link
fetch_pdf	arxiv_id	Full extracted text content of the paper PDF

Usage

Clone and run

git clone https://github.com/younesbensafia/arxiv-mcp-server
cd arxiv-mcp-server
uv run arxiv-mcp-server

Test with MCP Inspector

1. Run the server: uv run arxiv-mcp-server
2. Open MCP Inspector or run npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector
3. Set transport to STDIO
4. Command: uv
5. Args: run arxiv-mcp-server
6. Working directory: path to this repo
7. Click Connect -- all tools appear on the left

Connect to Claude.ai

Add to your MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "arxiv": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/arxiv-mcp-server", "arxiv-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

arXiv Category Codes

Code	Area
cs.AI	Artificial Intelligence
cs.CL	Computation and Language
cs.CV	Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
cs.IR	Information Retrieval
cs.LG	Machine Learning
cs.NE	Neural and Evolutionary Computing
cs.SE	Software Engineering
eess.AS	Audio and Speech Processing
math.ST	Statistics Theory
physics.chem-ph	Chemical Physics
physics.optics	Optics
q-bio.BM	Biomolecules
q-fin.ST	Statistical Finance
quant-ph	Quantum Physics
stat.ML	Machine Learning (Statistics)
stat.TH	Statistics Theory

Full list at arxiv.org/category_taxonomy.

Examples

Ask Claude (or any MCP-compatible assistant):

• "Find the latest papers on RAG from the last 3 months"
• "Summarise arxiv paper 2301.07041"
• "What are the most recent cs.LG papers today?"
• "Find all papers by Andrej Karpathy"
• "Read the full text of 1706.03762 and explain the methodology"

Don't have an MCP-compatible client? Try Claude Code or the MCP Inspector with uv run arxiv-mcp-server.

Demo

search_papers

<p float="left"> <img src="assets/demo/search_papers/query.png" width="48%" /> <img src="assets/demo/search_papers/result.png" width="48%" /> </p>

get_paper

<p float="left"> <img src="assets/demo/get_paper/arxiv_id.png" width="48%" /> <img src="assets/demo/get_paper/result.png" width="48%" /> </p>

fetch_pdf

<p float="left"> <img src="assets/demo/fetch_pdf/arxiv_id.png" width="32%" /> <img src="assets/demo/fetch_pdf/result_1.png" width="32%" /> <img src="assets/demo/fetch_pdf/result_2.png" width="32%" /> </p>

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.