zbmath-mcp

MCP server for zbMath Open — the world's most comprehensive reviewed database of mathematical literature.

This server exposes the zbMath Open REST API as Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, enabling AI assistants such as Claude to search and retrieve mathematical publications, author profiles, and software entries directly.

Tools

Tool	Description
search_documents	Free-text search across 4.5 M+ zbMath documents
get_document	Fetch full metadata for a document by its zbMath ID
structured_search	Field-filtered search (author, title, MSC code, year range, journal)
get_author	Fetch an author profile by zbMath author ID
get_software	Fetch a software / swMath entry by its numeric ID

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• uv (recommended) or pip

Installation

Using uv (recommended)

Installs a global zbmath-mcp command:

uv tool install git+https://github.com/iwaokimura/zbmath-mcp.git

Using pip

pip install git+https://github.com/iwaokimura/zbmath-mcp.git

From source

git clone https://github.com/iwaokimura/zbmath-mcp.git
cd zbmath-mcp
uv sync

(With plain pip instead of uv, run pip install -e . in place of uv sync.)

Usage

Running the server

If you installed it as a tool (uv) or with pip:

zbmath-mcp

From a source checkout:

uv run zbmath-mcp

The server communicates over stdio using the MCP protocol, so running it in a plain terminal just waits for a client to connect — that is expected. Normally an MCP client (see below) launches it for you.

Connecting with Claude Desktop

Add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json:

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

Or, to run from a source checkout without installing (replace the path with your clone location):

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

Connecting with Claude Code (CLI)

If installed as a command:

claude mcp add zbmath -- zbmath-mcp

Or from a source checkout (replace the path with your clone location):

claude mcp add zbmath -- uv --directory /path/to/zbmath-mcp run zbmath-mcp

Example interactions

Once connected, you can ask an AI assistant:

• "Search zbMath for papers on the Langlands program from the last 5 years."
• "Get the zbMath document with ID 7192477."
• "Find all papers by Euler in zbMath."
• "Search for papers in MSC class 11 (Number Theory) published between 2000 and 2010."
• "Look up the software entry for Macaulay2 on swMath."

Development

git clone https://github.com/iwaokimura/zbmath-mcp.git
cd zbmath-mcp
uv sync          # installs runtime + dev dependencies
uv run pytest    # run the test suite

License

MIT — see LICENSE.