Lune MCP Server

@retrograde-labs/lune-mcp-server

The official Lune Research MCP server. It gives an AI agent a literature habit: full-text search over top-tier venues, citation trails, figure design references, and a curated corpus of research best practices.

Every answer your agent gives can rest on a paper it actually read, quoted by title, authors and venue, instead of on recall.

Install

Hosted (recommended). One endpoint, OAuth in the browser, no token to paste or rotate:

https://mcp.luneresearch.com

Claude Code:

claude mcp add lune --transport http https://mcp.luneresearch.com

Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Manus and the rest have their own wording for "add a custom connector". The Install page carries a copy-pasteable recipe for each, and the docs explain the flow.

Local stdio. For clients that only speak stdio, run the package directly and hand it a personal access token:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lune": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@retrograde-labs/lune-mcp-server"],
      "env": { "LUNE_API_KEY": "lune_your_personal_access_token" }
    }
  }
}

Mint a token at Settings -> Credentials. The server reads LUNE_API_KEY from the environment and writes diagnostics to stderr, never stdout, so JSON-RPC framing stays intact.

Tools

Fourteen tools. search_* finds candidates, get_* retrieves something you already have a handle on, and list_* browses. A fifteenth, get_more_tools, is offered alongside them so an agent can report a capability Lune is missing; it is not there if you opt out of analytics.

Finding papers

Reading them

Working across many at once

Designing figures

Doing the work well

Prompts

Seven guided workflows, which MCP clients surface as slash commands. Each one runs a multi-tool sequence grounded in the corpus, so a common research task is one command instead of an orchestration you have to think about.

Authentication and scopes

Both transports accept a Lune personal access token (lune_*); the hosted transport also accepts an OAuth access token, which is what the one-click client installs use. Send either as Authorization: Bearer ....

Tools declare the scope they need, and a token is only ever granted what you give it. papers:read covers the corpus, full text, citations and figures, guidance:read covers the research-guidance corpus, and account:read reads your identity and quota. A call made without the scope fails with both the scope it wanted and the scopes you hold, so the agent can say what to fix rather than guess.

Revoking a token or an app on the Credentials page takes effect immediately.

Transports

The hosted transport is stateless per request: the credential arrives on every call, so a client that has been idle for hours keeps working without re-initializing.

Links

• Documentation
• Install recipes for every client
• Quotas and billing
• Troubleshooting

Support

Bug reports and feature requests go to the issue tracker. For anything account-related, or to report a security issue, see SECURITY.md and the documentation.

License

MIT