mcpField
A
alphaxiv-paper-lookup

alphaxiv-paper-lookup

github.com/mhliulgyProductivity43 installs
Repository

About alphaxiv-paper-lookup

A workflow skill for looking up arXiv papers through AlphaXiv and retrieving structured AI-generated reports. It guides research-paper summaries and analysis, with full extracted text as a fallback when the report lacks details.

Key features

  1. 01Extract paper IDs from URLs or text
  2. 02Fetch structured Markdown reports
  3. 03Retrieve full paper text as fallback
  4. 04Handle missing report and text errors

Use cases

  1. 01Summarize a paper from its arXiv ID
  2. 02Explain a paper shared as an AlphaXiv URL
  3. 03Find a specific equation or section in full text

Install

Copy the command and run it in a terminal.

$npx skills add https://github.com/mhliulgy/my-skills --skill alphaxiv-paper-lookup

After installing, type/alphaxiv-paper-lookupin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.

Details

From the project README

AlphaXiv Paper Lookup

Look up any arxiv paper on alphaxiv.org to get a structured AI-generated overview. This is faster and more reliable than trying to read a raw PDF.

When to Use

  • User shares an arxiv URL (e.g. arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345)
  • User mentions a paper ID (e.g. 2401.12345)
  • User asks you to explain, summarize, or analyze a research paper
  • User shares an alphaxiv URL (e.g. alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.12345)

Workflow

Step 1: Extract the paper ID

Parse the paper ID from whatever the user provides:

InputPaper ID
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.123452401.12345
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.123452401.12345
https://alphaxiv.org/overview/2401.123452401.12345
2401.12345v22401.12345v2
2401.123452401.12345
Step 2: Fetch the machine-readable report
curl -s "https://alphaxiv.org/overview/{PAPER_ID}.md"

This returns the intermediate machine-readable report — a structured, detailed analysis of the paper optimized for LLM consumption. One call, plain markdown, no JSON parsing.

If this returns 404, the report hasn't been generated for this paper yet.

Step 3: If you need more detail, fetch the full paper text

If the report doesn't contain the specific information the user is asking about (e.g. a particular equation, table, or section), fetch the full paper text:

curl -s "https://alphaxiv.org/abs/{PAPER_ID}.md"

This returns the full extracted text of the paper as markdown. Only use this as a fallback — the report is usually sufficient.

If this returns 404, the full text hasn't been processed yet. As a last resort, direct the user to the PDF at https://arxiv.org/pdf/{PAPER_ID}.

Error Handling

  • 404 on Step 2: Report not generated for this paper.
  • 404 on Step 3: Full text not yet extracted for this paper.

Notes

  • No authentication required — these are public endpoints.

Comments

Markdown supported