CiteNexus

The AI-Native Academic Citation & Research Engine

Model Context Protocol Python 3.11+ License: MIT

CiteNexus is a fast, lightweight Model Context Protocol (MCP) server designed to give AI agents (like Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Cursor, and Windsurf) native access to the global academic literature graph.

The name says it all: it is the nexus where your AI assistant connects directly to the world's academic citations. Rather than forcing researchers to break their writing flow to navigate web interfaces, CiteNexus brings powerful reference management, citation generation, and metadata formatting directly into the IDEs and terminals where the writing actually happens.

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🌟 The Vision

For decades, reference management has meant opening dedicated desktop applications (like Zotero or EndNote) or navigating browser-based walled gardens. While modern tools like Google Scholar Labs offer fantastic human-centric reading experiences, they remain isolated from the actual writing environment.

CiteNexus takes a different approach: Innovation through Integration.

We believe the future of research is Agentic. Your AI assistant should be able to seamlessly fetch, format, and verify citations without you ever leaving your editor. CiteNexus acts as the critical bridge between massive academic databases (like Google Scholar) and your local AI workflows. It doesn't compete with the giants of academic search; it unlocks their full potential for the AI era.

Why CiteNexus?

• Cluster-First Architecture: Uses Google Scholar "Cluster IDs" as the universal source of truth, bypassing the brittleness of DOIs, mismatched titles, or broken URLs.
• LLM-Powered Formatting (Elicitation): Replaces thousands of lines of fragile parsing code with dynamic AI formatting. Need a bespoke BibTeX format for a niche IEEE conference? CiteNexus handles it gracefully.
• Where You Write: Integrates directly into your AI coding assistants, meta-prompting frameworks (like WTF-P), and terminal agents. No more tab-switching.

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🛠️ Core Capabilities

CiteNexus exposes four focused MCP tools to your AI agent:

1. find-scholar-id: Converts any messy input (a loose title, an ArXiv ID, a DOI, or a fragmented citation) into a universal, stable Google Scholar Cluster ID.
2. get-citation: Fetches the complete metadata for a Cluster ID and generates a perfectly accurate BibTeX entry.
3. enhance-citation: Applies custom templates, rules, and notes to an existing citation (e.g., "Change to first-initial only", "Add a custom note regarding methodology").
4. paper-metrics: Retrieves impact analytics, citation counts, and top related papers to help your agent evaluate a source's significance.

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🚀 Quickstart

CiteNexus is packaged with uv for lightning-fast installation and execution.

Prerequisites

You need a SerpAPI Key to query Google Scholar.

export SERP_API_KEY="your-serpapi-key"

(Optional) Fallback API Configuration: If your primary MCP client (e.g., Claude Code, Gemini CLI) does not yet support native MCP Elicitation, CiteNexus will automatically fall back to an OpenAI-compatible API to perform its data formatting.

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."
# Optional overrides for local models (Ollama, vLLM, etc.):
# export OPENAI_API_BASE="http://localhost:11434/v1" 
# export OPENAI_MODEL="llama3"

Running via uvx

You can run the server instantly without permanently installing it into your global environment:

uvx cite-nexus-mcp

IDE / Agent Integration Examples

Claude Desktop

Add CiteNexus to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cite-nexus": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["cite-nexus-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SERP_API_KEY": "your-serp-api-key",
        "OPENAI_API_KEY": "your-openai-api-key-if-needed"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor / Windsurf

Provide the exact same command (uvx cite-nexus-mcp) and environment variables in the MCP configuration panel of your IDE settings.

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🏗️ Development

To build on top of CiteNexus or run it locally:

1. Install uv:

   curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
   

2. Clone and install:

   git clone https://github.com/akougkas/cite-nexus-mcp.git
   cd cite-nexus-mcp
   uv sync
   

3. Run the development server:

   uv run cite-nexus-mcp
   

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🤝 Philosophy & The Future

CiteNexus is built on the "Engine in the Car" philosophy. It is designed to be the ultimate citation engine that powers larger, more ambitious academic AI frameworks. As the academic ecosystem evolves, CiteNexus will grow to encompass citation graph traversal, local library (PDF) syncing, and hallucination verification, empowering researchers to do their best work at the speed of thought.

📄 License

MIT License