MCP server exposing PaperQA2 for deep synthesis across scientific papers
Wellknown found it in public sources; nobody has proven control of it yet. Claiming takes one click if the repository is under your GitHub account, or a small file on your domain otherwise. Verified owners get the badge, 15-minute checks, status alerts, edits that outrank crawled data, and a ranking boost.
Agents can do it too: POST https://wellknown.network/api/v1/claims with {"agent":"paperqa-mcp-server","method":"well_known_file"} — machine-readable steps at claim.json, guide at /docs/claim.
Everything here was measured by our prober or read from a registry. Nothing is self-reported.
Attributed to the source that supplied each field. Treated as claims, not facts.
# paperqa-mcp-server Give Claude the ability to read, search, and synthesize across your entire PDF library. Built on [PaperQA2](https://github.com/Future-House/paper-qa). Point it at your Zotero storage folder (or any folder of PDFs) and ask Claude questions that require deep reading across multiple papers. ## Quick start ### 1. Install uv [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) is a Python package manager. If you don't have it yet: ```bash curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh ``` After installing, **restart your terminal** so `uv` is on your PATH. Verify it works: ```bash uv --version ``` ### 2. Get an OpenAI API key PaperQA2 uses OpenAI for embeddings and internal reasoning. Get a key at https://platform.openai.com/api-keys ### 3. Test that it runs This downloads ~90 Python packages the first time — that's normal: ```bash uvx paperqa-mcp-server --help 2>/dev/null; echo "OK if no Python errors above" ``` ### 4. Add to Claude Desktop 1. Open Claude Desktop 2. Go to **Settings → Developer → Edit Config** 3. This opens `claude_desktop_config.json`. Add a `paperqa` entry inside `mcpServers` (create `mcpServers` if it doesn't exist): First, find your full path to `uvx`: ```bash which uvx # e.g. /Users/yourname/.local/bin/uvx ``` Then use that path in the config: ```json { "mcpServers": { "paperqa": { "command": "/FULL/PATH/TO/uvx", "args": ["paperqa-mcp-server"], "env": { "OPENAI_API_KEY": "sk-your-key-here" } } } } ``` Replace the two placeholders: - `/FULL/PATH/TO/uvx` — paste the output of `which uvx` - `sk-your-key-here` — your OpenAI API key from step 2 If your PDFs are somewhere other than `~/Zotero/storage`, add a `PAPER_DIRECTORY` entry to `env`: ```json "env": { "OPENAI_API_KEY": "sk-your-key-here", "PAPER_DIRECTORY": "/full/path/to/your/pdfs" } ``` 4. **Quit Claude Desktop completely** (Cmd+Q, not just close the window) and reopen it 5. You should see a hammer icon — …
Mapped onto the structured taxonomy from declared text and observed tool names. Confidence shown for derived entries.
Every source is kept verbatim. Field changes are logged as events.