mcp-scholar@0.4.1
VERIFIED· not startedPublisher claims: "MCP Scholar - Modern academic research & literature analysis server for MCP clients" Observed in sandbox: no network, touches nothing outside the project, writes no memory.
Coverage
Not started: dependency install failed; the server itself was not observed.- Tested
- the dependency install step · every file read, file written and host contacted by what ran
- Not tested
- server startup · the tool list · tool behavior
What this means for the label: Verified here covers what ran. The server's tools were not exercised with a real credential, so nothing about their behavior is asserted; the credential summary below says what to do with that.
Before you give it your token
- It will ask for
ZOTERO_API_KEYConfiguration, not credentials: OPENALEX_EMAIL, ZOTERO_USER_ID- Where it talks to
- semanticscholar.org (its own)Also doi.org, crossref.org, openalex.org, google.com, zotero.org — not the publisher's domain; check what for before connecting.
- What the honeypot saw
- no credential files read · no network
- What we could not test
- server startup · the tool list · tool behavior
Connect it with a scoped credential, under the guard, and read the third-party hosts first. The code names doi.org, crossref.org, openalex.org, google.com, zotero.org as well as its own vendor. The guard injects ZOTERO_API_KEY only into requests to semanticscholar.org (and its subdomains) and refuses the rest.
Never paste a credential into a chat, a ticket or a report, including ours. How the guard holds it.
Is [email protected] safe to install?
KillerSkills ran it in the KillerSkills honeypot sandbox (2 scenarios; not started: dependency install failed; the server itself was not observed) on 2026-11-10 and scored it 85/100 (Verified). In what ran, nothing we could detect went wrong: no undeclared network egress, no credential reads, no persistent instruction writes. What it does with a real credential was not observed; the static findings and the publisher carry the rest of the score. Summary: no network, touches nothing outside the project, writes no memory.
Behavior trace
Honeypot run · 0 s · 2 scenarios · 0 deviationsStatic findings
return ".env"Fix: Stop enumerating or reading credential locations; take secrets from a declared environment variable the user sets on purpose.logger.error("\u83b7\u53d6\u8bba\u6587\u5f15\u7528\u9519\u8bef: %s", response.status_code)Fix: Put hosts, commands and strings in plain source. Decoding at runtime looks identical to malware and costs points on its own.if os.path.exists(".env"):Fix: Stop enumerating or reading credential locations; take secrets from a declared environment variable the user sets on purpose."""Locate the project .env without depending on the process cwd."""Fix: Stop enumerating or reading credential locations; take secrets from a declared environment variable the user sets on purpose.env_path = Path(__file__).parent.parent.parent / ".env"Fix: Stop enumerating or reading credential locations; take secrets from a declared environment variable the user sets on purpose.logger.error("\u83b7\u53d6\u8bba\u6587\u5f15\u7528\u65f6\u51fa\u9519: %s", exc)Fix: Put hosts, commands and strings in plain source. Decoding at runtime looks identical to malware and costs points on its own.logger.warning("\u8b66\u544a: \u672a\u627e\u5230.env\u6587\u4ef6,\u4f7f\u7528\u9ed8\u8ba4\u914d\u7f6e")Fix: Put hosts, commands and strings in plain source. Decoding at runtime looks identical to malware and costs points on its own.logger.error("\u83b7\u53d6\u8bba\u6587\u8be6\u60c5\u65f6\u51fa\u9519: %s", exc)Fix: Put hosts, commands and strings in plain source. Decoding at runtime looks identical to malware and costs points on its own.logger.error("\u901a\u8fc7DOI\u4e30\u5bcc\u6458\u8981\u65f6\u51fa\u9519: %s", exc)Fix: Put hosts, commands and strings in plain source. Decoding at runtime looks identical to malware and costs points on its own.Cost to the agent
Tokens estimated at four characters each. The tool list is re-read by the agent on every turn, so it is the number to compare between servers that do the same job: ranked across the index.
Known vulnerabilities
No advisories in OSV for mcp_scholar@0.4.1 as of 4d ago. This is the package itself, not its dependencies.