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PaperPal

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Connects LLMs to academic research sources for semantic paper searches and detailed information retrieval from arXiv and Hugging Face, enabling literature revie

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About

Connects LLMs to academic research sources for semantic paper searches and detailed information retrieval from arXiv and Hugging Face, enabling literature reviews and research exploration

README

🚨 Development has moved to https://github.com/milatechtransfer/paperpal

paperpal

MCP Extension to aid you in searching and writing literature reviews

Check out this conversation with Claude to see what it can do

How it works

paperpal gives your LLMs access to arxiv and Hugging Face papers. You can then have a natural conversation with your favourite LLMs (e.g. Claude) and have it guide you.

You can:

  • Discuss papers
  • Look for new papers
  • Organize ideas for liteature reviews
  • etc.

Of course, this tool is as good as the sum of its parts. LLMs can still hallucinate, and semantic search is never perfect.

Quickstart

There are many different ways with which you can interact with an MCP server.

Claude Desktop App

If this is your first time using an MCP server for Claude Desktop App, see https://modelcontextprotocol.io/quickstart/user

First, clone this repository locally:

git clone https://github.com/jerpint/paperpal

Next, add the extension to your app. Open your configuration file (on macOS this should be ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json) and and add the following to the extension:

For example on MacOS:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paperpal": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/Users/<username>/paperpal",
        "run",
        "paperpal.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart your Claude Desktop App and you should see it appear.

Cursor

If this is your first time using an MCP server for Cursor, see https://docs.cursor.com/context/model-context-protocol#remote-development

First, clone this repository locally:

git clone https://github.com/jerpint/paperpal

Add this to the root of the project in a .cursor/mcp.json file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paperpal": {
      "command": "/Users/jeremypinto/.cargo/bin/uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "/Users/jeremypinto/paperpal",
        "run",
        "paperpal.py"
      ]
    }
  }
}

from github.com/jerpint/paperpal

Installing PaperPal

This server has no published package — it is built from source. Open the repository and follow its README.

▸ github.com/jerpint/paperpal

FAQ

Is PaperPal MCP free?

Yes, PaperPal MCP is free — one-click install via Unyly at no cost.

Does PaperPal need an API key?

No, PaperPal runs without API keys or environment variables.

Is PaperPal hosted or self-hosted?

Self-hosted: the server runs locally on your machine via the install command above.

How do I install PaperPal in Claude Desktop, Claude Code or Cursor?

Open PaperPal on unyly.org, pick your client tab (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor) and press Install — the config is generated automatically, no JSON editing.

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