Paper Distill MCP Server

📚 Paper Distill MCP Server

Academic paper search, intelligent curation, and multi-platform delivery — built on the Model Context Protocol.

Compatible with all MCP clients: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Trae, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw, VS Code, Zed, and more.

⚠️ Early development stage. Many features are still being validated and may contain bugs or instabilities. Feedback and bug reports are warmly welcome!

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✨ Features

• 🔍 11-source parallel search — OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, PubMed, arXiv, Papers with Code, CrossRef, Europe PMC, bioRxiv, DBLP, CORE, Unpaywall
• 🤖 Adaptive AI delivery — the agent tracks your evolving research interests and automatically refines search keywords and recommendations over time
• 📊 4-dimensional weighted ranking — relevance × recency × impact × novelty, fully customizable weights
• 👥 Dual-AI blind review — two AI reviewers independently shortlist papers; a chief reviewer synthesizes a final push/overflow/discard decision (optional)
• 🧹 Scraper delegation — offload abstract extraction to a low-cost agent or API to cut token spend significantly
• 🌐 Personal paper library site — Astro + Vercel auto-deploy; site updates within 30 seconds of each push
• 📬 Multi-platform delivery — Telegram / Discord / Feishu / WeCom
• 📦 Zotero integration — save papers to Zotero with one command
• 📝 Obsidian integration — auto-generate paper note cards with Zotero backlinks; supports summary and template modes

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🚀 Quick Install

uvx paper-distill-mcp

That's it. Your AI client will discover all tools automatically. No API keys required for basic paper search.

No uv? → curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh or brew install uv

<details> <summary>Other installation methods (pip / Homebrew / Docker / source)</summary>

pip:

pip install paper-distill-mcp

Homebrew:

brew tap Eclipse-Cj/tap
brew install paper-distill-mcp

Docker:

docker run -i --rm ghcr.io/eclipse-cj/paper-distill-mcp

From source (developers):

git clone https://github.com/Eclipse-Cj/paper-distill-mcp.git
cd paper-distill-mcp
python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install --upgrade pip && .venv/bin/pip install -e .

</details>

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🔗 Connecting to AI Clients

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-distill": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paper-distill-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add paper-distill -- uvx paper-distill-mcp

Or add to .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-distill": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paper-distill-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Codex CLI (OpenAI)

Add to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.paper-distill]
command = "uvx"
args = ["paper-distill-mcp"]

Gemini CLI (Google)

Add to ~/.gemini/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paper-distill": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["paper-distill-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

OpenClaw

mcporter config add paper-distill --command uvx --scope home -- paper-distill-mcp
mcporter list  # verify

To remove: mcporter config remove paper-distill

<details> <summary>OpenClaw — install from source</summary>

git clone https://github.com/Eclipse-Cj/paper-distill-mcp.git ~/.openclaw/tools/paper-distill-mcp
cd ~/.openclaw/tools/paper-distill-mcp
uv venv .venv && uv pip install .
mcporter config add paper-distill \
  --command ~/.openclaw/tools/paper-distill-mcp/.venv/bin/python3 \
  --scope home \
  -- -m mcp_server.server
mcporter list

To remove: rm -rf ~/.openclaw/tools/paper-distill-mcp && mcporter config remove paper-distill

</details>

Other clients (Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, Trae)

Same JSON config, different config file paths:

Client	Config path
Claude Desktop	claude_desktop_config.json
Trae	Settings → MCP → Add
Cursor	~/.cursor/mcp.json
VS Code	.vscode/mcp.json
Windsurf	~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json
Zed	settings.json

HTTP transport (remote / hosted)

paper-distill-mcp --transport http --port 8765

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🎯 Getting Started

After connecting your client, tell the agent "initialize paper-distill".