Provides integration with arXiv for searching preprints and retrieving arXiv paper IDs as part of literature search.
Provides tools for searching scholarly literature and retrieving paper metadata, citations, references, related papers, author profiles, and coauthorship information via Semantic Scholar.
This server does not currently have a deployable release on Glama. Follow the repository's setup instructions to install and configure it for your MCP client, including any required credentials and local dependencies.
A literature scout for AI agents.
LitScout is a self-hosted MCP server that lets an AI agent search the scholarly literature through one compact, rate-limit-aware interface. Each person deploys their own copy to their own free Cloudflare account with one command, using their own API keys.
Status: pre-alpha. Nothing is runnable yet. This repository holds the design documents and roadmap. The npm package
litscoutis a placeholder until v0.1.0. Follow the roadmap for progress.
General web search does a poor job on scholarly metadata. Tools that read arXiv full text don't answer the questions researchers ask most:
What are the important papers on this topic, including the very latest preprints?
Who cites this paper, and what does it build on?
Who is this researcher, and who do they work with?
Is this paper any good? Where was it published, how highly ranked is the venue, and what did the reviewers say?
Is there a legal open-access copy?
LitScout answers these questions from several sources with few tools. The server fans each query out to the relevant sources, merges and de-duplicates the results, and returns one compact list. The agent therefore spends fewer tokens than it would calling several separate source-specific tools.
Related MCP server: UniArticles MCP Server
Tool | What it answers | Sources |
| Papers on a topic, with filters for year, venue, open access and recency | Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, arXiv, CORE |
| Metadata for one paper or a batch, including open-access links | Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CORE |
| Citations, references and related papers | Semantic Scholar |
| A researcher's profile, merging author records that the sources have split | Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex |
| Shared papers between researchers | Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex |
| Peer reviews, ratings and decisions | OpenReview |
| How a venue is ranked (CCF, ICORE) | Bundled table |
LitScout works alongside other MCP servers rather than replacing them. For example:
Reading arXiv full text: use a paper-reading server. LitScout returns arXiv IDs you can pass to it.
Citation formatting, verification and retraction checks: use a citation server.
npx litscout deploy # deploys to your own Cloudflare account (free tier) and asks for your API keys
npx litscout pair # prints the connector URL and a one-time pairing codeThen add the URL as a custom connector in Claude, or in any client that supports remote MCP, and enter the pairing code when asked. You don't need a GitHub OAuth app or a shared server, and your keys stay in your own account.
Self-hosted, with your own keys. Upstream rate limits (Semantic Scholar allows 1 request per second per key) belong to each user, never to a shared pool.
Few tools, compact output. Merging happens on the server, not in the agent's context window.
Respect upstream rules. There is one rate limiter per source, and LitScout never bypasses bot checks or scrapes sites that have no API.
Degrade gracefully. A slow or rate-limited source is skipped and reported, without failing the whole call.
See docs/design.md for the architecture.
The pairing-code setup flow is modelled on moodle-cli (MIT).
Data comes from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, arXiv ("Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability"), OpenReview and CORE.
This server cannot be deployed
Scholarly search: OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv, OpenCitations and PubMed in one endpoint.
Search arXiv/Semantic Scholar/OpenAlex + medical evidence (PubMed/Europe PMC) + LaTeX/PDF tools.
GitHub, npm, PyPI, Stack Overflow, arXiv and OpenAlex paper search as agent tools.
Search 250M scholarly works (OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv, PubMed) and resolve any DOI