scholar-mcp
by pvliesdonk
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL | No | Log level for FastMCP internals and app loggers (DEBUG / INFO / WARNING / ERROR). The -v CLI flag overrides to DEBUG. | INFO |
| SCHOLAR_GITHUB_TOKEN | No | GitHub personal access token for Relaton sync; lifts unauthenticated GitHub rate limit from 60/hr to 5,000/hr. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_ACL_PATH | No | Path to a TOML ACL file for per-subject authorization. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_BASE_URL | No | Public base URL, required for OIDC (e.g. https://mcp.example.com). | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_CACHE_DIR | No | Directory for the SQLite cache database and downloaded PDFs. | /data/scholar-mcp |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_READ_ONLY | No | If true, write-tagged tools (fetch_paper_pdf, convert_pdf_to_markdown, etc.) are hidden. | true |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_MODEL | No | Model name for VLM-enriched conversion. | gpt-4o |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_S2_API_KEY | No | Semantic Scholar API key; optional but recommended for higher rate limits. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_DOCLING_URL | No | Base URL of a running docling-serve instance (e.g. http://localhost:5001). | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_API_KEY | No | API key for the VLM endpoint. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_VLM_API_URL | No | OpenAI-compatible VLM endpoint for formula/figure-enriched PDF conversion. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_BEARER_TOKEN | No | Static bearer token for HTTP transport authentication. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_CONTACT_EMAIL | No | Included in the OpenAlex User-Agent for polite pool access (faster rate limits); also enables Unpaywall PDF lookups. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_OIDC_CLIENT_ID | No | OIDC client ID. | |
| FASTMCP_ENABLE_RICH_LOGGING | No | Set to false for plain / structured JSON log output. | true |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_EVENT_STORE_URL | No | Event store backend for HTTP session persistence — memory:// (dev), file:///path (survives restarts). | memory:// |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_OIDC_CONFIG_URL | No | OIDC discovery endpoint URL. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_EPO_CONSUMER_KEY | No | EPO OPS consumer key; both key and secret must be set for patent tools to appear. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_BEARER_TOKENS_FILE | No | Path to a TOML file with mapped bearer tokens for multi-subject authentication. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET | No | OIDC client secret. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_EPO_CONSUMER_SECRET | No | EPO OPS consumer secret. | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_GOOGLE_BOOKS_API_KEY | No | Google Books API key for higher rate limits (1000 req/day without key). | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_OIDC_JWT_SIGNING_KEY | No | JWT signing key; required on Linux/Docker to survive restarts (openssl rand -hex 32). | |
| SCHOLAR_MCP_BEARER_DEFAULT_SUBJECT | No | Default subject string for single-token bearer auth (default: bearer-anon). |
Capabilities
Server capabilities have not been inspected yet.
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No tools | |
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
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