Arxiv MCP Server

🚀 arXiv Research Assistant MCP Server

This project is an MCP-based server designed to interact with the vast arXiv.org paper database. It enables clients like Claude AI to efficiently search, explore, and compare arXiv papers via a custom-built local server. It's constructed using Python and the FastMCP framework, with uv for lightweight package management.

✨ Features

• 🔍 Keyword-based Paper Search
  Search for arXiv papers using keywords, with options to sort by relevance or recency.

• 📚 Latest Papers in a Category
  Specify an arXiv category code (e.g., cs.AI, math.AP) to get the latest papers in that field.

• 📄 Paper Detail Query
  Retrieve detailed metadata using a paper's arXiv ID, including title, authors, abstract, category, DOI, PDF link, etc.

• 🧑‍🔬 Author-based Paper Search
  Retrieve a list of papers published by a specific author.

• 📊 Trend Analysis (Experimental)
  Get an overview of popular keywords or topics in a category (currently using simulated data).

• 📝 Summary Prompt Generator
  Dynamically generate prompts to help LLMs summarize selected papers more effectively.

• 🆚 Comparison Prompt Generator
  Provide two paper IDs to generate a structured prompt for comparison content.

🔧 Technical Details

• Python 3.11+
• FastMCP
• uv (for dependency and environment management)
• requests (for API communication)
• xml.etree.ElementTree (for parsing XML responses)

🚀 Quick Start

Installation via Smithery

To automatically install the arXiv Research Assistant MCP Server for Claude Desktop using Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install arxiv-paper-mcp --client claude

Installation from PyPI

uv pip install arxiv-paper-mcp

🔧 Clone the Repository (for Development)

git clone https://github.com/daheepk/arxiv-mcp-server.git
cd arxiv-mcp-server

🔧 Install Dependencies (for Development)

Install all dependencies in editable mode using uv:

uv pip install -e .

▶️ Run the Server (Locally)

arxiv-paper-mcp

Usage with Claude

To use this MCP server with Claude, add the following JSON configuration to Claude's MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "arXivPaper": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "tool",
        "run",
        "arxiv-paper-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

📁 Project Structure

arxiv-mcp-server/
├── arxiv_mcp/              # Main package
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── app.py              # FastMCP application setup
│   ├── server.py           # Server entry point
│   ├── utils.py            # arXiv API communication logic
│   ├── resources/          # MCP resources (categories, authors, etc.)
│   ├── tools/              # MCP tools (search, detail query, trends)
│   └── prompts/            # Prompt templates (summary, comparison)
├── pyproject.toml          # Project configuration and dependencies
└── README.md               # This file