cern-inspire-mcp-server

@cyanheads/cern-inspire-mcp-server Search INSPIRE-HEP papers, authors, experiments, HEPData records; get citation metrics and BibTeX via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP. 8 Tools • 1 Literature Resource Template • 1 Agent Skill

Public Hosted Server: https://cern-inspire.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

High-energy-physics literature from INSPIRE-HEP and the HEPData tables behind it. Search papers, authors, and experiments, compute citation summaries and h-indices, export BibTeX or LaTeX, and find the record holding a paper's numerical data.

Tools

Resources

The same record is reachable through cern_inspire_get_paper for clients that don't surface resources.

Agent skill

cern-inspire-guide covers identifier routing, query syntax, and research workflows. Plugin installs, npm, Docker, and the Claude Desktop bundle include it. MCP clients can discover it through skills/list or read skill://cern-inspire-guide/SKILL.md from resources/list.

Capability reference

cern_inspire_search_literature tool

• INSPIRE query syntax or free text, with sort (relevance, mostrecent, mostcited), document_types and subjects (up to 4 values each, all must hold), and year_from / year_to; positive integer size (default 10, clamped to 100), paged by page
• Only the first 10,000 results of a query are reachable: page × effective size beyond that fails as beyond_result_window; a reversed year range fails as invalid_year_range
• Hits carry recid, title, first author, date, citation counts, arXiv ID, DOI, publication, and a 300-character abstract snippet; the page also returns totalCount, nextPage, and appliedFilters, and a notice flags queries matching over 100,000 records

cern_inspire_get_paper tool

• paper takes a recid, arXiv ID, DOI, inspirehep.net literature URL, or HEPData ins / hepdata.net record/ins URL; resolvedAs names the form that matched, and a miss fails as paper_not_found. A merged recid returns the surviving record, with mergedFrom naming the recid asked for
• max_authors (default 25, capped at 500) and author_offset (default 0) page through contributors; pass nextAuthorOffset to continue. Entries retain recorded roles (such as editor or supervisor); an absent role stays unknown. authorCount retains INSPIRE's count, falling back to the available contributor-list length
• documents lists public attached-document URLs with recorded filename, description, material, and full-text status; hidden and URL-less entries are omitted. Files are not downloaded. External urls remain separate; citingQuery and referencesQuery feed cern_inspire_search_literature
• hepdata.status is available, none, or lookup_failed, with recordDoi, latestVersion, tableCount, and hepdataUrl when available; extra HEPData records appear in hepdata.otherRecords

cern_inspire_export_citations tool

• Any literature query (recid:451647 or arxiv:1207.7214 for named papers), with the same document_types, subjects, year_from, year_to, and sort as search; reversed years fail as invalid_year_range
• format is bibtex (default), latex-eu, or latex-us; positive integer size (default 10, clamped to 50), paged by page within the first 10,000 matches (beyond that, beyond_result_window)
• Entries arrive verbatim from INSPIRE, each with its texkey; truncated and nextPage signal more results, and appliedFilters echoes the selection

cern_inspire_search_authors tool

• A name or one identifier (BAI, ORCID, INSPIRE ID, author recid); positive integer limit (default 5, clamped to 25)
• matchedAs is orcid, inspire_id, bai, or recid (exact match), or name (free-text search returning ranked candidates to choose from)
• Profiles carry recid, bai, ORCID, positions (with an institutionRecid that affid:N takes for the institution's papers), advisors, arXiv categories, awards, and a literatureQuery selecting the person's papers

cern_inspire_get_citation_summary tool

• Exactly one of author (BAI, ORCID, INSPIRE ID, or author recid) or query (any literature query, such as affid:902725 for an institution's papers); otherwise missing_target, and a name passed as author fails as author_not_identifier
• Narrow with document_types, subjects, year_from, year_to, and exclude_self_citations
• Returns h-index, citation totals and averages, and paper counts in the buckets 0, 1–9, 10–49, 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500+, each for all citeable and for published papers
• citationsByYear is omitted, with a notice, when year_from, year_to, or exclude_self_citations is set, when INSPIRE does not return it, or for queries matching more than about 150,000 records

cern_inspire_search_experiments tool

• An experiment, collaboration, accelerator, or facility name, an INSPIRE legacy name (CERN-LHC-CMS), or an experiment recid (digits only); positive integer limit (default 5, clamped to 25)
• Records carry the accelerator, host institutions, collaboration, lifecycle dates, ongoing (omitted when INSPIRE records neither state), INSPIRE's paper count, and a literatureQuery for cern_inspire_search_literature or cern_inspire_get_citation_summary

cern_inspire_search_hepdata tool

• Free text or INSPIRE syntax over HEPData submissions (collaborations.value:LHCb, literature.control_number: ); sort is relevance or mostrecent; positive integer size (default 10, clamped to 50), within the same 10,000-result window
• Records carry paperRecids, collaborations, keywords (reactions, observables, centre-of-mass energies), recordDoi, latestVersion, tableCount, and hepdataUrl (each record's own hepdata.net page); table values are not returned

cern_inspire_list_reference tool

• topic: search_syntax, identifiers, document_types, subjects, citation_buckets, or hepdata
• Static term / meaning / example entries; no upstream call

inspire://literature/{recid} resource

• The cern_inspire_get_paper dossier as application/json, with the first 25 contributors, their recorded roles, and public attached-document links
• Takes a recid only; use the tool for arXiv IDs, DOIs, or further contributor pages. A merged recid serves the surviving record, with mergedFrom

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core: stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, pluggable auth (none / jwt / oauth), swappable storage (in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1), structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing.

INSPIRE-specific:

• Paces requests to 12 per 5 s, under INSPIRE's limit of 15, with a cooldown after a 429; a call that can't start in time fails as pacer_shed with a retryAfter
• 55 s budget per tool call, including queue wait and up to 2 retries
• Requests select only the fields a tool returns; author email addresses are never requested
• Forgiving inputs: paper identifiers accept arXiv: / doi: prefixes, version suffixes, and arxiv.org, doi.org, or inspirehep.net URLs; author identifiers accept an orcid.org URL

Agent-friendly output:

• Positive integer result budgets above the ceiling succeed with a notice stating requested and effective values: literature 100, HEPData and citation export 50, author and experiment search 25. Defaults stay unchanged; zero, negative, and fractional budgets fail. Paging and the 10,000-result window use the effective size
• Chainable identifiers: hits carry recid, author profiles and experiments carry a ready literatureQuery, and cern_inspire_get_paper returns citingQuery and referencesQuery
• Query echo and paging state: totalCount, truncated / shown / cap, nextPage, appliedFilters, and effectiveQuery, plus a notice with next-step text on empty, capped, or suspiciously broad results
• Discriminated fields: hepdata.status, resolvedAs, matchedAs, and target.kind let callers branch on data; typed failure reasons (paper_not_found, author_not_found, beyond_result_window, inspire_rate_limited) each carry a recovery hint
• No fabrication: a field INSPIRE leaves out stays absent and prints as "Not available" or "not recorded"
• Titles and abstracts as text: publisher HTML, JATS, and MathML become plain text (σ_γ, ^{23}Na(n,γ)), with LaTeX left as published and