arxiv-mcp

An MCP server that lets any coding agent search arXiv and download papers. Free, no API key, two tools.

Tools

Both are read-only on the network side. The server touches arXiv's public API (export.arxiv.org) — no key, no signup, no rate-limit token.

Related MCP server: Research Server

Install

git clone https://github.com/vishal24p/arxiv_mcp.git
cd arxiv_mcp
uv venv
uv pip install -e .

Requires Python 3.10+ and uv.

Wire it into your agent

arxiv-mcp install            # auto-detect and patch all found agents
arxiv-mcp install --only codex   # one specific agent
arxiv-mcp install --dry-run  # show what would change, write nothing

Supported agents:

The installer merges an arxiv entry into each detected config, backs up the original to <file>.bak, and never touches other settings. Restart the agent and the tools appear.

Use

Ask the agent anything that needs arXiv:

find 3 papers on mixture of experts
download 1706.03762
what's the most cited recent paper on RLHF?

The agent picks search_arxiv or download_paper based on what you ask. PDFs land in ./papers/. Override the location with ARXIV_MCP_PAPERS_DIR.

Run without installing to an agent

arxiv-mcp serve
# ...or:
python -m arxiv_mcp

Speaks MCP over stdio. Useful for testing or wiring into something that isn't a coding agent.

License

Apache 2.0.