Asta MCP — Academic Paper Search

Asta is Ai2's Scientific Corpus Tool, exposing the Semantic Scholar academic graph over MCP (streamable HTTP transport). This skill tells agents which Asta tool to call for which intent, and how to compose them into useful workflows.

• - MCP endpoint: INLINECODE0
• Auth: x-api-key header (request key at https://share.hsforms.com/1L4hUh20oT3mu8iXJQMV77w3ioxm)
• Transport: streamable HTTP

Prerequisite Check

Before invoking any tool, verify the Asta MCP server is registered in the host agent. Tool names will be prefixed by the MCP server name chosen at install time (commonly asta__<tool> or mcp__asta__<tool>). If no Asta tools are visible, direct the user to the Installation section below.

Tool Map — Intent → Asta Tool

User intent	Asta tool	Notes
Broad topic search	INLINECODE4	Supports venue + date filters
Known paper title

search_paper_by_title | Optional venue restriction | | Known DOI / arXiv / PMID / CorpusId / MAG / ACL / SHA / URL | get_paper | Single-paper lookup | | Multiple known IDs at once | get_paper_batch | Batch lookup — prefer over N sequential get_paper calls | | Who cited paper X | get_citations | Citation traversal with filters, paginated | | Find author by name | search_authors_by_name | Returns profile info | | An author's publications | get_author_papers | Pass author id from previous call | | Find passages mentioning X | snippet_search | ~500-word excerpts from paper bodies |

All tools accept date-range filters and field selection — pass them whenever the user's intent constrains scope (e.g., "recent", "since 2022", "at NeurIPS").

⚠️ fields parameter — avoid context blowups

INLINECODE14 / get_paper_batch accept a fields string. Never request citations or references via fields — a single highly-cited paper (e.g. Attention Is All You Need) returns 200k+ characters and will overflow the agent's context window. Use the dedicated get_citations tool instead (it paginates).

Safe default fields for get_paper:

title,year,authors,venue,tldr,url,abstract

Add journal, publicationDate, fieldsOfStudy, isOpenAccess only when needed.

Workflow Patterns

Pattern 1 — Topic Discovery

1. 1. search_papers_by_relevance(query, year="2022-", venue=?) → initial hits
2. Rank/present top N by citationCount + recency
3. Offer follow-ups: get_citations on the most influential, or snippet_search for specific claims

Pattern 2 — Seed-Paper Expansion

1. 1. get_paper(DOI|arXiv|...) → verify seed
2. INLINECODE31 → forward expansion
3. Optionally search_papers_by_relevance with seed title terms for sideways discovery
4. Deduplicate by paperId before presenting

Pattern 3 — Author Deep-Dive

1. 1. search_authors_by_name(name) → pick correct profile (disambiguate by affiliation)
2. INLINECODE34 → full publication list
3. Filter client-side by topic keywords or date

Pattern 4 — Evidence Retrieval

1. 1. snippet_search(claim_query) → find passages making/supporting a claim
2. For each hit, optionally get_paper(id) for full metadata

Output & Interaction Rules

• - Always report total count and which tool was used.
• Present top 10 as a table (title, year, venue, citations), then details for the most relevant.
• If the user writes in Chinese, present summaries in Chinese; keep titles in original language.
• After results, offer: Details / Refine / Citations / Snippet / Export / Done.

Critical Rules

• - Prefer batched intent over ping-pong. If the user's question needs two independent lookups, issue them as parallel MCP tool calls in one turn, not sequentially.
• Never guess IDs. If a user gives a fuzzy title, use search_paper_by_title before get_paper.
• Respect rate limits. An API key buys higher limits but not unlimited — stop expanding citation graphs beyond what the user asked for.
• Do not fabricate fields. If Asta returns null abstract or venue, say so rather than inventing.

Relationship to semanticscholar-skill

Both wrap the Semantic Scholar corpus, but target different runtimes:

	INLINECODE42	INLINECODE43
Transport	Python + direct REST (s2.py)	MCP (streamable HTTP)
Host needs

S2_API_KEY + Python | Asta MCP registered in host |
| Best for | Scripted batch workflows, custom filters | Zero-code agent integration (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenClaw) |
| Auth | S2_API_KEY | ASTA_API_KEY via x-api-key header |

Use asta-skill when the host agent supports MCP; fall back to semanticscholar-skill for scripted/pipeline work.

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Installation

Set ASTA_API_KEY in your shell first:

CODEBLOCK1

Claude Code

CODEBLOCK2

Or edit ~/.claude.json / .mcp.json:

CODEBLOCK3

Codex CLI

Edit ~/.codex/config.toml:

CODEBLOCK4

Windsurf / Cursor / Hermes / other MCP clients

Add to the client's MCP server config file:

CODEBLOCK5

LM Studio

LM Studio 0.3.17+ supports remote MCP servers. Edit ~/.lmstudio/mcp.json (macOS/Linux) or %USERPROFILE%\.lmstudio\mcp.json (Windows) — or in the app: Program tab → Install > Edit mcp.json:

CODEBLOCK6

Only models with "Tool Use: Supported" in LM Studio's model loader will be able to call Asta tools. Recommended: Qwen 2.5 / 3 Instruct (7B+), Llama 3.1 / 3.3 Instruct (8B+), Mistral / Mixtral Instruct.

OpenClaw

Install this skill into ~/.openclaw/skills/asta-skill/ and register the MCP server in your OpenClaw config using the same URL + x-api-key header pattern. The skill's frontmatter declares ASTA_API_KEY as required via metadata.openclaw.requires.env.

Verification

After installation, ask the agent: "Use Asta to look up the paper with DOI 10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762." A successful call returns the "Attention Is All You Need" paper metadata. If the agent reports no Asta tools, the MCP server is not registered — re-check the config file path and restart the host.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
INLINECODE61	Missing or invalid INLINECODE62	Verify ASTA_API_KEY is set and header is forwarded
INLINECODE64

Rate limit hit | Slow down / batch; ensure API key is attached (unauth'd limits are lower) | | No Asta tools visible | MCP server not registered in host | Re-run install step, restart agent | | Empty abstract | Not all corpus papers have full text | Use snippet_search instead, or fall back to title + TLDR | | Author disambiguation wrong | Common name collisions | Inspect affiliations in search_authors_by_name before calling get_author_papers |