PaperMate

PaperMate is an all-in-one toolkit designed to streamline your academic workflow. Whether you're searching for papers, looking for similar research, or converting PDF files into editable Word documents, PaperMate has you covered.

📚 Table of Contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Integration Note
• Setup Guide for Tavily Integration
• Usage with Claude Desktop App

✨ Features

• 🔍 Search academic papers easily
• 🧠 Find similar or related papers
• 📄 Convert paper PDFs to Word format

📦 Requirements

• Python >= 3.13
• Node.js >= 20
• Claude Desktop App
• Tavily API key

🚀 Installation

PaperMate requires Python 3.13.2 and Node.js 20+.

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/papermate.git
cd papermate

2. Install dependencies and create a virtual environment using uv:

uv venv 
uv sync

💡 Note
Don’t have uv yet? Install it with:

curl -Ls https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

💡 Note
uv sync automatically installs from requirements.txt if no pyproject.toml is found.

🔧 Integration Note
PaperMate's paper search and recommendation features are powered by @mcp.prompt functions and work seamlessly with the Claude Desktop app.
To enable internet-based academic search, you must connect the Tavily Search API by adding your Tavily API key in the Claude Desktop app's API Keys settings.

📄 Setup Guide for Tavily Integration with PaperMate

This guide explains how to enable internet-based academic search in PaperMate by integrating the Tavily Search API using the Claude Desktop app.

🔧 Step 1: Prepare Your Environment

Make sure you have Node.js v20 or higher installed.

node -v

If not, download and install it from nodejs.

📂 Step 2: Update Claude Desktop Configuration

Open the following configuration file (replacing {username} with your real username):

/Users/{username}/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Add the following configuration block (replacing "{your API key}" with your real Tavily API key):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tavily-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "tavily-mcp@0.1.3"
      ],
      "env": {
        "TAVILY_API_KEY": "{your API key}"
      }
    }
  }
}

💡 Note
If you already have other mcpServers defined, just merge this block into the existing JSON.

🎉 You're all set! PaperMate is now ready to fetch and recommend papers using real-time web search via Tavily.

Once this is set up, PaperMate will be able to search for and recommend academic papers using Tavily's web search capabilities through Claude Desktop.

If you have any issues, check that your API key is valid and that your Node.js version is compatible.

🖥 Usage with Claude Desktop App

🔧 Step 1: Open the Claude Desktop App config.json file

Navigate to the following path (replace {username} with your actual macOS username):

/Users/{username}/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

📂 Step 2: Register MCP servers by adding the following configuration

"PaperResearcher": {
  "command": "uv",
  "args": [
    "run",
    "--with",
    "mcp[cli]",
    "mcp",
    "run",
    // Replace with your actual path to the paperMate project directory
    "/{absolute path to your local paperMate project}/paper_researcher.py"
  ]
},
"PDFHelper": {
  "command": "uv",
  "args": [
    "run",
    "--with",
    "PyPDF2",
    "--with",
    "mcp[cli]",
    "--with",
    "python-docx",
    "mcp",
    "run",
    // Replace with your actual path to the paperMate project directory
    "/{absolute path to your local paperMate project}/pdf_helper.py"
  ]
}

🚀 Step 3: Launch the Claude Desktop App and confirm the MCP servers are running correctly

Once the config file has been updated, restart the Claude app. You should now be able to use the PaperMate features via Claude chat using the configured MCP commands.