Scholar Sidekick - Agent Skills
Portable Agent Skills that teach AI agents to use Scholar Sidekick - a fast, deterministic citation resolver, formatter, exporter, and citation verifier.
Paste any scholarly identifier (DOI, PMID, PMCID, ISBN, ISSN, arXiv ID, ADS bibcode, or a WHO IRIS URL) and get a clean citation in 10,000+ CSL styles, a bibliography file (BibTeX, RIS, EndNote, CSL-JSON, CSV...), a retraction check (Crossref + Retraction Watch), an open-access check (Unpaywall), or a fabrication check that catches the real-DOI-plus-invented-title pattern (Topaz et al., Lancet 2026) that plain DOI resolution misses.
Skills in this repo
| Skill | Path | Use when |
|---|---|---|
scholar-sidekick-api | skills/scholar-sidekick-api | Zero-install. The agent can run curl/HTTP. No API key, no setup — calls the public REST API directly. Start here. |
scholar-sidekick-cli | skills/scholar-sidekick-cli | The agent has Node ≥20 and prefers typed subcommands (scholar format …), batch input, streaming, and > file redirection over hand-built curl payloads. Ships on npm as scholar-sidekick-cli. |
scholar-sidekick-mcp | skills/scholar-sidekick-mcp | The host has the scholar-sidekick-mcp MCP server connected (works anonymously — no key required; optional SCHOLAR_API_KEY/RAPIDAPI_KEY raise limits). Native tool calls instead of curl. |
scholar-sidekick-python | skills/scholar-sidekick-python | The agent runs Python ≥3.9 — a script, a notebook, or a data pipeline — and wants typed objects (and a pandas DataFrame) instead of parsed text. Ships on PyPI as scholar-sidekick. Best path for a reference list longer than 25 entries: it chunks and paces automatically. |
They expose the same API underneath; pick the one that matches how your agent is wired. The
Python client covers format / export / verify / audit only — for a standalone retraction check,
open-access check, or style search, use scholar-sidekick-api or -cli.
Install
These skills follow the open SKILL.md convention, so they install in any compatible agent
(Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenClaw, and more):
# list what's in the repo
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills --list
# add everything in the repo (all four skills)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills
Or install one skill by its explicit skills/<name> path:
# zero-install REST skill (start here)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills/skills/scholar-sidekick-api
# CLI skill (agent has Node ≥20; uses the `scholar` command)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills/skills/scholar-sidekick-cli
# MCP skill (host has the scholar-sidekick-mcp server connected)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills/skills/scholar-sidekick-mcp
# Python skill (agent runs Python ≥3.9; uses the `scholar-sidekick` package)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills/skills/scholar-sidekick-python
Browse the rendered docs: scholar-sidekick-api · scholar-sidekick-cli · scholar-sidekick-mcp · scholar-sidekick-python on skills.sh.
Quick taste (no install)
curl -sS -X POST "https://scholar-sidekick.com/api/format" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text":"10.1038/nphys1170","style":"apa","output":"text"}'
Discovery surfaces (built for agents)
- API contract: https://scholar-sidekick.com/llms.txt · https://scholar-sidekick.com/AGENTS.md
- OpenAPI 3.1: https://scholar-sidekick.com/openapi/openapi.yml
- Agent Skills discovery index: https://scholar-sidekick.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json
- MCP server: https://github.com/mlava/scholar-sidekick-mcp ·
npx -y scholar-sidekick-mcp@latest - Python client: https://github.com/mlava/scholar-sidekick-python ·
pip install scholar-sidekick - Data sources & determinism: https://scholar-sidekick.com/.well-known/sources.json
- Browse on skills.sh: https://www.skills.sh/mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills
Not a paper-search tool
These skills assume you already have an identifier. To find papers by topic, pair with a
literature-discovery tool (e.g. an arxiv, Semantic Scholar, or OpenAlex skill). Scholar
Sidekick handles the cite / export / verify layer once you have the ID.
License
MIT © Scholar Sidekick.