NobleBlocks MCP Server

Search 340 million deduplicated academic papers from Claude Desktop, Claude Web, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, or any MCP-compatible tool. Covers 15+ academic databases — all cross-linked through a biomedical knowledge graph with 1.3M+ entities and 109M+ paper connections.

This is a thin authenticated client — all indexing, ranking, vector search, and knowledge graph traversal runs on the NobleBlocks backend. You get fast results without managing any infrastructure.

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What's in the index

| Source | Papers | Updates | |--------|--------|---------| | OpenAlex | ~250M works | Daily | | Semantic Scholar | ~220M papers | Weekly | | PubMed / MEDLINE | ~41M articles | Daily | | Europe PMC | ~43M articles | Daily | | Crossref | Incremental | Daily | | arXiv | ~2.5M preprints | Daily | | bioRxiv / medRxiv | ~1K/day | Daily | | ClinicalTrials.gov | ~582K trials | Daily | | Unpaywall | OA link resolution | Daily | | DBLP | Computer science | Via OpenAlex | | CORE | ~37M open access outputs | Coming soon | | BASE (Bielefeld) | Discovery metadata | Via OpenAlex | | DOAJ | Open access journals | Via Crossref | | Papers with Code | ML/AI benchmarks | Weekly | | Retraction Watch | Retraction status | Weekly | | USPTO / EPO patents | ~9.3M patent-paper links | Daily | | …and others | | |

All sources are cross-deduplicated on DOI, PMID, and arXiv ID. Total unique records after dedup: 340M+ (June 2026).

Knowledge graph

The search backend also maintains a biomedical knowledge graph (1.3M+ entities, 109M+ paper links) with genes, diseases, drugs, proteins, institutions, researchers, topics, genetic variants, and drug-target-disease relationships sourced from PubTator Central, DisGeNET, ChEMBL, UniProt, ROR, ORCID, Open Targets, and others.

Tools

| Tool | What it does | |------|-------------| | search_papers | Full-text + semantic hybrid search with year/citation/source filters | | get_paper | Fetch metadata by DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, or OpenAlex ID | | find_similar | Find papers related by meaning, not just keyword matching | | get_citation_graph | Citation network — references and citing papers | | search_by_entity | Find papers linked to a gene, drug, disease, or institution via the KG | | create_literature_review | AI-generated structured lit review with citations (Pro) |

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Get an API key

All usage requires a free NobleBlocks account. Sign up takes 30 seconds:

Go to nobleblocks.com/signup
Create an account (email or Google)
Navigate to Settings > API Keys and generate a key

Free plan: 100 searches/day, 5 similar/day, citation graph access. Pro plan: 5,000 searches/day, literature review generation, priority support.

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Quick start (Remote — no install needed)

The easiest way to get started is the remote connector — no API keys, no Python install:

Open claude.ai → Settings → Connectors (or Integrations)
Click "Add" and paste: https://mcp.nobleblocks.com/mcp
Sign in with your NobleBlocks account
Ask Claude: "Search for papers on CRISPR gene therapy"

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Install (Local)

uvx nobleblocks-mcp

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Configure Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nobleblocks": {
      "command": "nobleblocks-mcp",
      "env": {
        "NOBLEBLOCKS_API_KEY": "nb_pk_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The NobleBlocks tools will appear in the tools list.

Configure VS Code Copilot

Add to .vscode/mcp.json in your project:

{
  "servers": {
    "nobleblocks": {
      "command": "nobleblocks-mcp",
      "env": {
        "NOBLEBLOCKS_API_KEY": "nb_pk_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Configure Cursor / Cline / Continue

Point your editor's MCP settings at the nobleblocks-mcp command with stdio transport. Set NOBLEBLOCKS_API_KEY in the environment.

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CLI usage

You can also search directly from the terminal:

# Search papers
nobleblocks search "CRISPR base editing" --limit 5 --min-year 2022

# Get a specific paper
nobleblocks get 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2

# Find similar papers
nobleblocks similar "Attention Is All You Need"

# Citation graph
nobleblocks citations 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2 --direction both

All CLI commands require NOBLEBLOCKS_API_KEY set in your environment (or pass --key).

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Environment variables

| Variable | Default | Description | |----------|---------|-------------| | NOBLEBLOCKS_API_KEY | (required) | Your API key from nobleblocks.com | | NOBLEBLOCKS_API_BASE | https://www.nobleblocks.com | API endpoint | | LOG_LEVEL | INFO | Logging verbosity |

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Examples

Once configured, ask naturally in Claude/Cursor:

"Find the most-cited papers on CRISPR base editing from 2022-2024"

"Show me papers similar to 'Attention Is All You Need' by Vaswani"

"What papers cite DOI 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2?"

"Find papers linking BRCA1 to drug resistance"

"Generate a literature review on CAR-T cell therapy in solid tumors"

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Development

git clone https://github.com/nobleblocks/nobleblocks-mcp.git
cd nobleblocks-mcp
pip install -e .

# Test with MCP Inspector
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector nobleblocks-mcp

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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Built by NobleBlocks — the academic research platform for the AI era.

nobleblocks-mcp