grad-agent

An autonomous MCP agent that helps you apply to fully funded MS and PhD programs.

• Discovers professors on arXiv in your research areas

• Verifies each candidate is actually faculty (Semantic Scholar, h-index, papers)

• Scrapes their lab page for a recruiting signal + email address

• Matches them to your strongest shipped project

• Drafts a specific, fact-checked cold email (Claude Haiku authors + verifies claims against paper abstracts)

• Compiles a per-school SOP to PDF (LaTeX)

• Tracks everything in xlsx: outreach, LOR requests, program deadlines

• Emails every draft to your inbox for review; nothing is sent to a professor without you

Runs as a stdio MCP server for Claude Code / Claude Desktop / any MCP client, or as a plain CLI.

Published on:

• PyPI: grad-agent

• MCP Registry: io.github.i-ninte/grad-agent

Install

Pick one:

# Recommended for MCP clients (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, etc.)
uvx grad-agent server      # single-shot, no persistent install

# Persistent CLI install
pipx install grad-agent

# Or in a venv
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install grad-agent

Related MCP server: OpenArx

Set up in 5 minutes

grad-agent init

This writes:

• ~/.grad-agent/profile.yaml — your identity, projects, preferences

• ~/.grad-agent/programs.yaml — target programs (seeded)

• ~/.grad-agent/.env — secrets template

Fill in ~/.grad-agent/.env:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
SMTP_SERVER=smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=you@gmail.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=<gmail app password>
SMTP_FROM=you@gmail.com
# Optional:
GITHUB_USERNAME=your-gh
GITHUB_TOKEN=github_pat_...
HF_USERNAME=your-hf

Fill in the important bits of ~/.grad-agent/profile.yaml:

• name, identity_line, portfolio

• cv_path, transcript_path (absolute paths)

• degree_status: bachelors | masters (drives PhD eligibility gating)

• target_term, target_degree

• research_areas: [nlp, ai4health, ...]

• seed_projects: 3 to 10 flagship projects with name, pitch, link, tags

Then:

grad-agent sync        # scan projects (GitHub + HF + local)
grad-agent run         # one batch, drafts land in your inbox

Register with Claude Code

Three commands, in order:

pipx install grad-agent
pipx ensurepath                              # opens ~/.local/bin on PATH
claude mcp add grad-agent grad-agent server

Prefer a zero-install one-liner? Skip pipx and use uvx:

claude mcp add grad-agent uvx grad-agent server

Then in a new Claude Code session:

/mcp

You should see grad-agent connected with ~25 tools. Before it does anything useful, run grad-agent init (or uvx grad-agent init) and fill in ~/.grad-agent/.env and ~/.grad-agent/profile.yaml as described in the setup section above.

If you skipped pipx ensurepath, grad-agent register-claude prints an absolute-path variant of the command that works without PATH changes.

Register with Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grad-agent": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["grad-agent", "server"]
    }
  }
}

The uvx command needs no prior install. If you already ran pipx install grad-agent, you can use "command": "grad-agent", "args": ["server"] instead.

Any other MCP client (Cursor, Zed, Windsurf) uses the same manifest shape; just point them at uvx grad-agent server.

Daily autonomous run (macOS)

The package ships a launchd plist template. To fire every day at 08:00:

cp /path/to/grad_agent/templates/com.gradagent.daily.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.gradagent.daily.plist

Every morning: 3 verified faculty leads, hooks fact-checked against paper abstracts, in your inbox for review.

What each MCP tool does

Blog publishing tools (publish_article, update_article, ...) are gated behind blog.enabled: true in profile.yaml and are specific to the author's Turso-backed Next.js portfolio. Most users can ignore them.

What the agent will not do

• Send any email to a professor. Every send is manual, from your Gmail, after you read the draft.

• Fabricate a paper claim. The hook goes through a second Claude call that rejects any claim not present in the abstracts, and rewrites.

• Draft for programs you are ineligible for. If your degree_status is bachelors, PhD programs that require an MSc first are filtered out.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+

• macOS or Linux (Windows untested)

• pdflatex on PATH if you want SOP PDFs (macOS: MacTeX; Ubuntu: texlive-latex-recommended)

• Anthropic API key

• Gmail (or another SMTP) for the review-mailer

Where your data lives

Everything is under ~/.grad-agent/ by default, or $GRAD_AGENT_HOME if set:

~/.grad-agent/
  profile.yaml         identity + preferences
  programs.yaml        target programs
  .env                 secrets (gitignored)
  data/
    outreach_log.xlsx  every prof surfaced or drafted
    lor_log.xlsx       recommendation-letter tracker
    catalog.json       synced projects (GitHub + HF + local)
    db.sqlite          drafts + status
  drafts/              per-school SOP + email drafts

Contributing

MIT licensed. PRs welcome for: more program templates, non-Gmail SMTP presets, non-arXiv source adapters, and better prof-verification heuristics.

Author

Kwabena Obeng · i-ninte.github.io/portfolio/