Quick Start | ScholarMCP Docs

Prerequisites

Node.js 22.14 or later, preferably Node.js 24 LTS
npm

Install

Global install:

npm install -g scholar-mcp

To update an existing installation to the 1.2 release:

npm install -g scholar-mcp@1.2.0
scholar-mcp --version

The expected version is 1.2.0. Restart your MCP client after upgrading so it loads the new server process.

GitHub Packages mirror

The same release is available as @lstudlo/scholar-mcp. Configure the scope and authenticate to GitHub Packages with a token that has read:packages:

npm config set @lstudlo:registry https://npm.pkg.github.com
npm login --scope=@lstudlo --registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com --auth-type=legacy
npm install -g @lstudlo/scholar-mcp@1.2.0
scholar-mcp --version

Both packages provide the scholar-mcp command. Install one distribution at a time.

One-off run without global install:

npx -y scholar-mcp --transport=stdio

Run ScholarMCP

Start in stdio mode (recommended for MCP clients):

scholar-mcp --transport=stdio

Start in http mode:

scholar-mcp --transport=http

Check HTTP health endpoint:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/health

Choose Your Client

After ScholarMCP is installed, connect it to your coding agent:

Claude Code: /getting-started/claude-code/
OpenAI Codex: /getting-started/openai-codex/
OpenCode: /getting-started/opencode/

First Useful Prompt

After attaching ScholarMCP to your MCP client:

Find 10 recent papers on retrieval-augmented generation and summarize methods and datasets.