Alexandria MCP server

Read from the package source without running it. The installed server may list more.

• library_answer

  Ask a question in plain English and get a synthesized answer with inline [n] citations, fused across sources with reciprocal rank fusion. Use this instead of library_ask when you want a cited answer rather than raw results. Every factual sentence is cited or dropped; an uncited or all-dropped answer is flagged in warnings[]. Requires OPENAI_API_KEY (or ALEXANDRIA_SYNTH_API_KEY). Set response_forma

• library_ask

  Ask for content in plain English; automatically selects the best sources from all … libraries, generates optimized per-source queries, and searches in parallel. Use this as the default entry point for any natural-language request. Use library_search instead when you already know which source to query. Requires OPENAI_API_KEY (already set for embeddings). Set response_format: "detailed" for routing

• library_citations

  List the works a scholarly item cites (direction: "references") or the works that cite it (direction: "citations"), resolved through OpenAlex's citation graph with OpenCitations as a fallback when OpenAlex has no record. Accepts an id/source from library_search or library_ask, or a bare DOI/arXiv id. Set format: "bibtex" | "ris" | "apa" to also return a `formatted` bibliography string; BibTeX pref

• library_health_check

  Report per-source health: 'ok', 'degraded', 'down', 'key_missing', or 'unknown', merging this process's live error rate and latency with the last off-process probe run. The probe layer reads eval/probe-latest.json, which published installs do not ship, so on a published install a source's status stays 'unknown' until this process itself calls it. Use before relying on a source that has been errori

• library_index

  Dry run: fetch text, chunk semantically, score OCR quality. No writes. Full-text sources only.

• library_ingest

  Chunk, embed, and store a text. Idempotent. Full-text sources only. Requires OPENAI_API_KEY + SUPABASE_URL + SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY.

• library_list_sources

  List all … library sources (count computed from the live registry at startup) with descriptions and capabilities.

• library_read

  Fetch text from a library source. Full-text sources return cleaned text (truncated at 200k chars). Metadata sources return item details and an external URL.

• library_recommend

  Get papers similar to a given paper using Semantic Scholar's recommendation engine. Pass a paperId from a semanticscholar search result. Returns up to 500 similar papers.

• library_research

  Deep research on a topic: outlines 3 to 7 coverage objectives, generates search queries, answers each with library_answer, extracts learnings and follow-up questions, then recurses with half the breadth. Stops once every objective is covered by a learning, at the given depth, at the time budget, or once a round finds no new sources. Requires OPENAI_API_KEY (or ALEXANDRIA_RESEARCH_API_KEY / ALEXAND

• library_search

  Search a specific library source by name. Use library_ask instead for natural language queries across multiple sources. Sources marked [full text] support library_read and library_ingest. Sources marked [metadata] return discovery info and external URLs only.

• read

  fake read

• search

  fake search

• Code scan393 source files scanned25/25
• –Live reliabilityno gateway calls yet and no remote to proben/a
• –Tool poisoningtools not inspected (local package is not executed); not countedn/a
• Auth qualitystatic API keys via environment variables6/15
• Maintenancelast push 40 days ago12/15
• Maintainer identityregistry namespace matches repository owner7/10

Safety score

77/100

higher than 55% of 3,470 Web search servers

Tools

13

the typical Web search server has 5

Tools that change things

0%

typical: 0%. Fewer write tools means less an agent can break

GitHub stars

2

more than 70% of 1,786 Web search servers

Downloads a week

28

more than 14% of 827 Web search servers with a package

Alexandria: common questions

Is Alexandria MCP server safe?

Mostly: it is graded B (77/100). Read the Alexandria safety report

How do I install Alexandria?

It runs on your machine. Copy the Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code or Claude Desktop config from the install section.

Does Alexandria need an API key?

Yes. The registry entry asks for OPENAI_API_KEY, ALEXANDRIA_API_KEY, CORE_API_KEY, COURTLISTENER_API_KEY and 6 more.

Is Alexandria maintained?

The last commit was 58 days ago (2026-09-07). The latest release is v11.0.0.

What can I use instead of Alexandria?

Servers from other publishers that do the same job: Arxiv MCP server, Pubmed MCP server and Jshookmcp MCP server.

How does Alexandria compare with other Web search MCP servers?

safety score 77/100 (higher than 55% of 3,470 Web search servers); tools 13 (the typical Web search server has 5); tools that change things 0% (typical: 0%. Fewer write tools means less an agent can break). Full comparison.