refcheck-mcp@0.1.0
VERIFIED· not startedPublisher claims: "MCP server for academic reference verification against Crossref, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore" 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
ELSEVIER_INSTTOKENIEEE_API_KEYS2_API_KEYConfiguration, not credentials: CROSSREF_EMAIL, ELSEVIER_KEY- Where it talks to
- no vendor host named in the codeAlso arxiv.org, doi.org, crossref.org, ieee.org, elsevier.com, 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, doi.org, crossref.org, ieee.org, elsevier.com, semanticscholar.org as well as its own vendor. The guard injects ELSEVIER_INSTTOKEN, IEEE_API_KEY, S2_API_KEY only into requests to the host you bind (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 2026-11-15 and scored it 87/100 (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
load_dotenv(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.# Load .env from CWD (where the MCP server is launched), then fallback to repo rootFix: Stop enumerating or reading credential locations; take secrets from a declared environment variable the user sets on purpose.load_dotenv(Path.cwd() / ".env")Fix: Stop enumerating or reading credential locations; take secrets from a declared environment variable the user sets on purpose.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
Not checked against OSV yet; the weekly check has not reached this version.