Machine Library — Claude Code MCP server: cited search and install
Hooks your agent up to papers, books, patents and social posts, and hands back canonical links you can cite.
claude mcp add --transport http mcp https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai/What Machine Library does
Machine Library is a hosted MCP server that gives an agent a retrieval layer over peer-reviewed papers, books, patents, standards, Wikipedia, Reddit, Telegram, Discord and YouTube. Hits come back with a canonical source_uri, a snippet of up to 900 characters and an abstract preview of up to 800 characters, so the agent can point at a source instead of paraphrasing from memory.
Four core tools are read-only. machinelibrary_search_documents covers papers, patents and standards; machinelibrary_search_social covers Reddit, Telegram and Discord; machinelibrary_fetch_document returns bounded full text, 40K characters by default and up to 100K; machinelibrary_search_in_document pulls up to five matching passages out of one document. Search returns 10 hybrid-ranked results by default and is capped at 30. The hosted server also exposes machinelibrary_research plus three write tools for search feedback, document comments and comment votes.
Transport is Streamable HTTP at https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai, with OAuth 2.1 and PKCE or a Bearer API key. Claude opens a browser on first use, but Cursor, VS Code, Cline and Windsurf need the key pasted into an Authorization header — skip that and every call fails. Search is billed: $0.01 base plus $0.001 per returned result, $0.05 for a full document fetch, $0.015 for in-document passage search. Citation backlinks on machinelibrary_fetch_document are opt-in because they trigger another billed search.
What it helps with
- cite a primary source instead of paraphrasing it
- check prior art before filing a patent
- pull community discussion from Reddit and Telegram
- find a passage inside a 20K-token document
- get full text plus a canonical link for a paper
Example prompts for the agent
- Find papers on retrieval-augmented generation and give me the source links
- Check prior art for this method
- What are people saying on Reddit and Telegram about this tool?
How to install Machine Library
Platform CLI: remote server
claude mcp add --transport http mcp https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai/Platform CLI: remote server
codex mcp add machine-library --url https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai/Config file
{
"mcpServers": {
"machine-library": {
"url": "https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai/"
}
}
}Config file
{
"servers": {
"machine-library": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai/"
}
}
}Platform CLI: remote server
gemini mcp add -t http machine-library https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai/Step by step, with commands for each platform: How to add an MCP server to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI and more
Questions about Machine Library
How do I install Machine Library in Claude Code?
Run claude mcp add --transport http --scope user machinelibrary https://mcp.machinelibrary.ai. A browser opens for OAuth login on first use, so there is no key to paste.
What does Machine Library do?
It is a search layer for your agent: it queries papers, books, patents, standards, Wikipedia, YouTube, Reddit and Telegram, then returns text with canonical links for citation.
How much does a search cost?
A $0.01 base plus $0.001 per returned result, so the default 10 results cost $0.02. A full document fetch is $0.05 and in-document passage search is $0.015.
