Mendeley MCP Server for Antigravity & AI Assistants

Connect your Mendeley reference library to Google Antigravity (AGY), Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other Model Context Protocol (MCP) clients. Search your academic library, retrieve full-text PDF papers, access annotations, generate BibTeX citations, and query Mendeley's global catalog of 100M+ research publications using natural language prompts.

🏛 Architecture

flowchart LR
    A["Elsevier / Mendeley API<br/>(OAuth 2.0 & REST)"] <--> B["mendeley-mcp Server<br/>(Python Stdio)"]
    B <--> C["MCP Protocol<br/>(JSON-RPC 2.0)"]
    C <--> D["AI Assistant Client<br/>• Google Antigravity (AGY)<br/>• Claude Desktop<br/>• Cursor"]

Related MCP server: Scopus MCP Server

🌟 Key Features

• Personal Library Search: Search papers by title, author, abstract, or keywords.

• Full-Text PDF Extraction: Retrieve and read raw text from attached research papers directly into agent context.

• Annotations & Highlights: Surface notes and highlights previously made on PDFs in Mendeley.

• Global Catalog Search: Access Mendeley's 100M+ academic paper database.

• DOI Lookup: Fetch metadata and papers instantly from any DOI.

• Folder & Collection Management: Browse nested collections, create, rename, and organize references.

• BibTeX Generation: Export formatted BibTeX citation entries for individual papers or whole folders.

• Secure Token Management: OAuth 2.0 authentication with automatic refresh token persistence via system keyring.

📋 Prerequisites

1. Python 3.10+ (Tested on Python 3.12).

2. Mendeley Account: Register at mendeley.com.

3. Mendeley Developer Application:

   • Visit dev.mendeley.com/myapps.html and sign in.

   • Click Register a new app.

   • App Name: Antigravity MCP (or similar).

   • Redirect URL: http://localhost:8080 (or http://localhost:8585/callback).

   • Flow: Select Authorization code flow (not Legacy).

   • Save your Client ID and Client Secret.

🚀 Quick Start

1. Installation

Install via pip or uv:

pip install -r requirements.txt
# or directly
pip install mendeley-mcp

2. Authentication (OAuth 2.0)

If your app was registered with the standard URI http://localhost:8585/callback, run:

mendeley-auth login

If your app was registered with http://localhost:8080 (or a custom port), use the included mendeley_oauth.py script:

python mendeley_oauth.py --client-id <YOUR_CLIENT_ID> --client-secret <YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET> --port 8080

cp .env.example .env
python mendeley_oauth.py

This opens your browser to sign in to Elsevier/Mendeley. Once authorized, tokens are stored securely in your system keyring and ~/.config/mendeley-mcp/credentials.json.

Verify status anytime:

python -m mendeley_mcp.auth status

⚙️ MCP Client Configuration

1. Google Antigravity (AGY)

Add the mendeley server to your Antigravity configuration files:

• Global Config: ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json

• IDE Config: ~/.gemini/antigravity-ide/mcp_config.json

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

On Windows, you can also specify the absolute executable path if needed:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mendeley": {
      "command": "C:\\Users\\<YourUser>\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python312\\Scripts\\mendeley-mcp.exe"
    }
  }
}

Enable the server in ~/.gemini/mcp-server-enablement.json:

{
  "mendeley": {
    "enabled": true
  }
}

2. Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

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

🛠 Available Tools (18 Tools)

🔍 Verification & Testing

Verify that Mendeley MCP can initialize and communicate over stdio:

python -c "
import subprocess, json

proc = subprocess.Popen(['mendeley-mcp'], stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, text=True)
proc.stdin.write(json.dumps({'jsonrpc': '2.0', 'id': 1, 'method': 'initialize', 'params': {'protocolVersion': '2024-11-05', 'capabilities': {}, 'clientInfo': {'name': 'test', 'version': '1.0'}}}) + '\n')
proc.stdin.flush()
print('Handshake Response:', proc.stdout.readline())
proc.terminate()
"

🔒 Security Best Practices

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.