paperpal

paperpal

ML literature research for agents and humans: find it, verify it, score it, cite it.

paperpal is a plugin for coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, and any MCP client). It gives your agent a research methodology and the tools to follow it:

• Find: semantic search over top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AISTATS, …), Hugging Face papers (with community upvotes), today's daily papers, trending models
• Verify: arXiv metadata (current title and version, venue hints), Semantic Scholar (venue, citations), and full text via arxiv-txt.org with regex grep, so numbers get quoted in context
• Score: an evidence card per paper (venue from three sources, citations, age, code link) with a suggested 1–5 credibility band. You or your agent make the final call.
• Cite: a barebones notes template, rendered to a static HTML page where every citation is a clickable link. Select all → paste into Google Docs, and links and tables survive. LaTeX ($..$, $$..$$) is rendered with KaTeX; only pages that contain math get a script.

LLMs can still hallucinate and semantic search is never perfect. paperpal is built around making every claim checkable.

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Install

Claude Code

git clone https://github.com/jerpint/paperpal
claude --plugin-dir ./paperpal

The plugin registers the paperpal skill and the paperpal MCP server (run with uv).

Codex

paperpal ships a portable Agent Plugins 1.0.0 manifest and a local marketplace:

git clone https://github.com/jerpint/paperpal
codex plugin marketplace add ./paperpal
codex plugin add paperpal@paperpal-local
codex mcp list        # → paperpal

Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client

Add the server to your client's MCP config (for Claude Desktop on macOS, that's ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json; for Cursor, .cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paperpal": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/paperpal", "paperpal-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Skill only

Any agent that reads the open skills format can use the methodology without the server: copy skills/paperpal/ into your agent's skills folder (e.g. .agents/skills/ for Codex). The skill falls back to the CLI.

CLI

cd paperpal && uv sync
uv run paperpal -h

Requires uv and Python ≥ 3.11.

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Use

Ask your agent things like:

• "Find peer-reviewed evidence that alignment training reduces output diversity, and score each source."
• "Was this arXiv paper accepted anywhere? Check the exact number it reports for X."
• "Prep research notes on small language models for a Google Doc: pointers only, every citation linked."

Or drive it directly:

uv run paperpal top "persona consistency role-playing" --n 5    # top-tier venues
uv run paperpal hf "ternary quantization" --n 5                 # Hugging Face papers
uv run paperpal dair                                            # DAIR weekly curation → JSON, discovery only
uv run paperpal daily                                           # today's HF daily papers
uv run paperpal meta 2510.22954                                 # arXiv metadata + venue hints
uv run paperpal card 2510.22954                                 # evidence card → suggested band
uv run paperpal full 2310.11324 --grep "76 accuracy points"     # verify a number in the full text
uv run paperpal new notes.md --title "My topic"                 # start from the template
uv run paperpal render notes.md                                 # → notes.html (gdoc-pasteable)

Tools

MCP tool	CLI	what it does
dair_papers	dair	latest public DAIR weekly shortlist; verify candidates on arXiv before citing
search_top_tier	top	semantic search over top-tier venue papers (paperz)
search_hf	hf	Hugging Face papers search (recency, upvotes)
daily_papers	daily	today's Hugging Face daily papers
trending_models	trending	trending models on the Hub
arxiv_meta	meta	arXiv title, authors, versions, comment / journal-ref venue hints
s2_lookup	s2	Semantic Scholar venue and citation counts
evidence_card	card	credibility evidence + a suggested 1–5 band with reasons
abstract	abs	abstract, categories and BibTeX (arxiv-txt)
full_text	full	full paper text, or regex matches with context
render_notes	render	linkify citations and write static, gdoc-pasteable HTML
—	new	create a notes doc from the template

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The methodology

The skill (skills/paperpal/SKILL.md) tells agents how to research. The full guide is METHODOLOGY.md, which also works standalone for humans. In short:

1. Primary sources only. Papers, model cards, repos, vendor posts. Blog summaries are leads, not citations.
2. Verify every kept item: metadata → top-tier venue → the exact number in the full text.
3. Score credibility (1–5) on venue, lab, public code and data, age, and replication. Build arguments on ≥4.5, hedge 3–4, and footnote or drop ≤2.
4. Tag everything:
   • source type: [peer-reviewed] [preprint] [industry] [secondary] [news]
   • status: known / inferred / unknown
5. Pointers, not prose, unless asked to write.
6. Every citation is a link. Render to static HTML before sharing.

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Configuration

env var	purpose
S2_API_KEY	optional Semantic Scholar API key. Unauthenticated requests share a small rate limit.

paperpal throttles requests per host (arXiv ≈ 1 request / 3 s), retries on 406 / 429 / 5xx, and falls back from arXiv to Hugging Face to arxiv-txt for metadata.

Development

See AGENTS.md. Quick version:

uv sync
uv run pytest -q              # offline tests
claude plugin validate .      # Claude Code manifest

Roadmap

• BibTeX export (the arxiv-txt parser already captures BibTeX)
• More venue sources for the evidence card

License

MIT