alterlab-bgpt-search

BGPT Paper Search

Overview

BGPT is a remote MCP server that searches a curated database of scientific papers built from raw experimental data extracted from full-text studies. Unlike traditional literature databases that return titles and abstracts, BGPT returns structured data from the actual paper content — methods, quantitative results, sample sizes, quality assessments, and 25+ metadata fields per paper — organized as "evidence units" that link each claim to the experiment, reported statistics, scope, and provenance behind it.

When to Use This Skill

Use BGPT when the value is in structured full-text experimental data, not titles/abstracts:

• Building evidence tables for a meta-analysis, scoping review, or clinical guideline
• Extracting sample sizes, effect sizes, methods, protocols, or conclusions across studies
• Comparing methodologies, or filtering papers by quality score / evidence grading
• Pulling the structured record for one known paper by DOI (lookup_paper)

Does NOT Trigger

Scenario	Use Instead
Real-time, web-grounded summary of recent news or developments	alterlab-perplexity
Broad biomedical title/abstract search by MeSH terms or PMIDs	alterlab-pubmed
Building an evidence table from PDFs you already have on disk	alterlab-pdf-extract
Full systematic review with PRISMA screening and risk-of-bias assessment	alterlab-literature-review
Organizing references or exporting BibTeX from a Zotero library	alterlab-pyzotero

Setup

BGPT is a hosted remote MCP server — no local installation required. It offers two transports:

Transport	Endpoint
SSE	https://bgpt.pro/mcp/sse
Streamable HTTP	https://bgpt.pro/mcp/stream

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport sse bgpt https://bgpt.pro/mcp/sse
# or Streamable HTTP:
claude mcp add --transport http bgpt https://bgpt.pro/mcp/stream

Other MCP clients

Clients that accept a remote server URL (Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, and similar):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bgpt": { "url": "https://bgpt.pro/mcp/sse" }
  }
}

Clients that can only launch a local command can use the bgpt-mcp npm bridge instead: "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "bgpt-mcp"].

Usage

The server exposes two tools:

Tool	Parameters
search_papers	query (required); num_results (1–100, default 16); days_back (only papers from the last N days); output_format (evidence, full, or legacy)
lookup_paper	doi (required); output_format

Search BGPT for: "CRISPR gene editing efficiency in human cells", 10 results

Each result carries:

• Title, authors, journal, year, DOI
• Methods: experimental techniques, models, protocols
• Results: key findings with quantitative data and reported statistics
• Sample sizes: number of subjects/samples
• Quality scores: study quality assessments
• Limitations and conclusions, with provenance back to the source sections

Without an MCP client, the same search is available over plain HTTP: POST https://bgpt.pro/api/mcp-search with a JSON body {"query": ..., "num_results": ..., "output_format": "evidence"} (add "api_key" after the free tier).

Verify before pooling. BGPT fields are machine-extracted, so check the sample sizes, effect sizes, and quality judgements you rely on against the source paper before they enter a meta-analysis or guideline table — an extraction error propagates silently into the pooled estimate. Cite the papers themselves (by DOI), not BGPT.

Pricing

• Free tier: the first 50 results, no API key required
• Pay-as-you-go: $0.02 per result actually returned (not per search), with an API key from bgpt.pro/mcp — set num_results deliberately, since every returned record is billed

Complementary Skills

Pairs well with:

• alterlab-literature-review — gather structured data with BGPT, then synthesize
• alterlab-pubmed — PubMed for broad discovery, BGPT for deep experimental data
• alterlab-biorxiv — combine preprint discovery with full-text data extraction
• alterlab-pyzotero — manage citations from BGPT search results

Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.