Claude Scholar
Semi-automated research assistant for academic research and software development. Supports Claude Code, OpenCode, and Codex CLI across ideation, coding, experiments, writing, and publication.
What is Claude Scholar?
Claude Scholar is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and VS Code to semi-automated research assistant for academic research and software development. supports claude code, opencode, and codex cli across ideation, coding, experiments, writing, and publication.
Semi-automated research assistant for academic research and software development. Supports Claude Code, OpenCode, and Codex CLI across ideation, coding, experiments, writing, and publication.
This server falls under the Knowledge & Memory category on MCPgee, the world's largest MCP server directory with 33,000+ servers.
Features
- Semi-automated research assistant for academic research and
Use Cases
Maintainer
Works with
Installation
Manual Installation
npx claude-scholarConfiguration
Configuration Details
claude_desktop_config.json
Performance
Response Metrics
Resource Usage
How to Set Up and Use Claude Scholar
Claude Scholar is a semi-automated research assistant for academic research and software development, designed to work inside Claude Code via skills, hooks, and agents. It provides end-to-end support for the research lifecycle — from literature review with Zotero integration through experiment analysis, paper drafting, and reviewer rebuttal writing. Researchers use it to maintain a structured project knowledge base in Obsidian and automate repetitive academic writing tasks across the ideation, coding, experiments, writing, and publication stages.
Prerequisites
- Claude Code CLI installed and authenticated
- Git installed (required by the setup script)
- Python and the uv package manager (optional, for Python development workflows)
- Zotero with the Galaxy-Dawn/zotero-mcp plugin (optional, for literature workflows)
- Obsidian (optional, for project knowledge-base features)
Clone the repository
Clone the claude-scholar repository to a temporary location before running the installer.
git clone https://github.com/Galaxy-Dawn/claude-scholar.git /tmp/claude-scholarRun the setup script
The setup script copies skills, hooks, agents, and rules into your ~/.claude directory while backing up any existing files. It preserves your existing configuration and records the install state for safe future uninstalls.
bash /tmp/claude-scholar/scripts/setup.shVerify installation
After setup, confirm that the skill and hook files are present in your Claude Code configuration directory.
ls ~/.claude/skills/ && ls ~/.claude/hooks/Configure optional Obsidian note language
If you use Obsidian for the knowledge base, set the note language environment variable. The default is English. You can also set it in ~/.claude/project-memory/registry.yaml under the note_language field.
export OBSIDIAN_NOTE_LANGUAGE=enStart a research session in Claude Code
Open your project in Claude Code and activate a research workflow using the /research-init skill. This will trigger a literature search and help you organize sources in Zotero.
/research-initUse the knowledge base commands
Initialize a project-scoped Obsidian vault and start ingesting research material using the KB commands exposed as skills.
/kb-init
/kb-ingestClaude Scholar Examples
Claude Desktop configuration
Claude Scholar does not run as a standalone MCP server — it installs skills and hooks into Claude Code directly. No server config block is needed. The setup script places files in ~/.claude/. If you want to reference settings, use this template.
{
"mcpServers": {}
}Prompts to try
After installation, use these prompts inside a Claude Code session to activate research workflows.
- "Help me start research on transformer attention mechanisms. I want a literature-grounded plan, key open questions, and next steps."
- "Review my Zotero collection on reinforcement learning and summarize research directions, gaps, and promising next steps."
- "Analyze results in this experiment folder, check what changed across runs, and write a decision-oriented summary."
- "Help me draft the related work section based on current findings and paper notes."
- "Help me write a rebuttal draft for these reviewer comments."Troubleshooting Claude Scholar
Setup script overwrites existing CLAUDE.md configuration
The installer detects an existing CLAUDE.md and instead installs the scholar configuration as CLAUDE.scholar.md (a sidecar file). Backups of overwritten files are saved to ~/.claude/.claude-scholar-backups/<timestamp>/.
Skills or hooks are not being triggered in Claude Code
Ensure Claude Code is restarted after installation so it picks up the new files in ~/.claude/hooks/ and ~/.claude/skills/. Check that hook files like skill-forced-eval.js and session-start.js exist in ~/.claude/hooks/.
Need to uninstall or update the scholar components
Run the uninstall script to safely remove components using the recorded install state: bash /tmp/claude-scholar/scripts/uninstall.sh. To update, run: cd /tmp/claude-scholar && git pull --ff-only && bash scripts/setup.sh
Frequently Asked Questions about Claude Scholar
What is Claude Scholar?
Claude Scholar is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that semi-automated research assistant for academic research and software development. supports claude code, opencode, and codex cli across ideation, coding, experiments, writing, and publication. It connects AI assistants to external tools and data sources through a standardized interface.
How do I install Claude Scholar?
Follow the installation instructions on the Claude Scholar GitHub repository. Clone the repo, install dependencies, and add the server config to your AI client.
Which AI clients work with Claude Scholar?
Claude Scholar works with all major MCP-compatible AI clients including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code (GitHub Copilot), Windsurf, and Cline.
Is Claude Scholar free to use?
Yes, Claude Scholar is open source and available under the MIT license. You can use it freely in both personal and commercial projects.
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