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paperly

by quynhtl
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Paperly for Claude

Read your Paperly library from Claude. Ask Claude to find the papers you saved, summarise what you highlighted, read a paper's full text, or put together a reference list, and it answers from your own library instead of from memory.

The plugin adds a local MCP server and a skill that tells Claude how to use it. Everything is read-only: it never changes your library. The one thing it can add to Paperly is a citation style Claude asks for, from the Zotero Style Repository (see the privacy policy below).

What Claude can do with it

Tool

What it does

search_library

Finds items by title, author or year, or by words anywhere in them: their full text, notes and highlights

get_item

An item's fields, abstract, formatted reference, and its files and notes

get_fulltext

The text Paperly extracted from a PDF, EPUB or web page, in slices

get_annotations

Your highlights and comments, with page numbers, in reading order

get_notes

Your notes on an item, as plain text

list_collections

Your collections, nested as in Paperly

get_collection_items

The items in one collection

format_bibliography

References in any citation style of the Zotero Style Repository

Related MCP server: principia-mcp

Set it up

  1. Turn on Paperly's local API. In Paperly, open Settings → Advanced and tick Allow other applications on this computer to communicate with Paperly. Paperly has to be open while Claude uses the library.

  2. Install the plugin in Claude Code:

    claude plugin marketplace add quynhtl/paperly-mcp
claude plugin install paperly@paperly

    or try it from a copy of this repository with claude --plugin-dir ./paperly-mcp. Without the plugin, the server alone can be added with claude mcp add paperly -- node /path/to/paperly-mcp/server/index.mjs.

The server needs Node.js 18 or later and nothing else: it has no dependencies, so nothing is downloaded when you install it.

To use another library than My Library, set PAPERLY_LIBRARY to groups/<group id> in the server's environment. A group's id is the number in the address of its page on zotero.org, https://www.zotero.org/groups/<group id>/.... Paperly also lists your groups, each with its id and name, through its local API. It turns browsers away there, so ask from a terminal while Paperly is open:

curl http://127.0.0.1:23119/api/users/0/groups

On Windows, type curl.exe. In Windows PowerShell, curl stands for Invoke-WebRequest, which introduces itself as a browser, so Paperly closes the connection without an answer, as if it were not running.

PAPERLY_API_URL changes where the server looks for Paperly (default http://127.0.0.1:23119/api/). If either setting names a library or a path Paperly doesn't have, every tool says so, rather than finding nothing or calling a key unknown; at an address where nothing answers, the tools say Paperly isn't answering, and name the address when it isn't the default.

Privacy policy

What the plugin reads. Only what Claude asks for through the tools above: item metadata, abstracts, notes, highlights and comments, and the full text Paperly has extracted from your files. It reads them from Paperly's local API on your own computer (127.0.0.1).

Where it goes. What a tool returns becomes part of your conversation with Claude, and is handled under the terms of your Claude account, like anything else you share in a conversation. The plugin itself sends nothing anywhere else: it makes no network requests other than to Paperly on your computer.

Citation styles. get_item and format_bibliography name a citation style by its id in the Zotero Style Repository, such as apa. When Claude asks for a style Paperly doesn't have yet, Paperly downloads it from https://www.zotero.org/styles/<id> and installs it, without asking first. That request carries the style's id and nothing from your library. The plugin accepts only such ids, never an address, so no style can come from anywhere else.

What it keeps. Nothing. It has no storage, no logs beyond Claude's own, no analytics and no telemetry.

Third parties. None, other than Anthropic as the provider of the Claude conversation you use it in, and zotero.org when Paperly downloads a citation style from it.

Contact. Questions or problems: open an issue at https://github.com/quynhtl/paperly-mcp/issues.

Develop

npm test                     # protocol and tool tests, against a fake Paperly
node test/live.mjs           # the tools against a running Paperly

The MCP protocol is implemented in server/mcp.mjs without the SDK, which is what keeps the server free of dependencies.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.

This server cannot be deployed

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Maintenance

ActivityMaintained
ResponsivenessNo issues

Resources

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