Skills/PyPI/paper-find-mcp

paper-find-mcp@0.2.1

VERIFIED· not started

Publisher claims: "A MCP server for searching and downloading academic papers from multiple sources." Observed in sandbox: no network, touches nothing outside the project, writes no memory.

Registry PyPI (MCP server)Publisher haibo-lu-luhaibo1985 · publishing for 330 daysInstalls 163Last detonated 4 h ago
$claude mcp add paper-find-mcp -- uvx paper-find-mcp
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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
NCBI_API_KEYSEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEYConfiguration, not credentials: CROSSREF_MAILTO, NCBI_EMAIL, PAPER_DOWNLOAD_PATH, SCIHUB_MIRROR
Where it talks to
no vendor host named in the codeAlso arxiv.org, biorxiv.org, doi.org, repec.org, crossref.org, google.com, iacr.org, medrxiv.org, nih.gov, sci-hub.ru, sci-hub.wf, sci-hub.ren, sci-hub.se, sci-hub.st, semanticscholar.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 arxiv.org, biorxiv.org, doi.org, repec.org, crossref.org, google.com, iacr.org, medrxiv.org, nih.gov, sci-hub.ru, sci-hub.wf, sci-hub.ren, sci-hub.se, sci-hub.st, semanticscholar.org as well as its own vendor. The guard injects NCBI_API_KEY, SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY only into requests to the host you bind (and its subdomains) and refuses the rest.

$vet-skills run --net declared -- uvx paper-find-mcp

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 2026-11-14 and scored it 91/100 (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 deviations
t+CategoryObserved action
0.0sprocessno install scripts in bundle
0.1sprocessdependency install exit 1 ·
0.1sclaimednot started: dependency install failed (exit 1); the server itself was not observed
0.1sprocessscript backend runs setup only
0.1sprocessno install scripts to re-run

Static findings

MEDIUM
Python subprocess execution detectedpaper_find_mcp/academic_platforms/sci_hub.py:95 · Python subprocess execution detectedresult = subprocess.run(Fix: Build commands from fixed arguments, never from interpolated strings; prefer an API client over shelling out.
AST05

No other findings across 10,217 lines in 45 files.

Cost to the agent

Instructions loaded
≈58 tok
1 file · 45 in bundle
Tool list per prompt
≈0 tok
0 tools · 0 per tool
Handshake
no reply
launch to tools/list, stdio
Undocumented tools
0
description under 20 chars · avg 0

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 paper-find-mcp@0.2.1 as of 3 h ago. This is the package itself, not its dependencies.