Pure instruction-pack skill wrapping Ai2's Asta MCP server (Semantic Scholar). Intent-to-tool routing, safe defaults, multi-agent.

asta-skill — Semantic Scholar via Ai2 Asta MCP

English · 中文 · Asta MCP Overview · Request API Key

A pure instruction-pack skill that turns natural-language research questions into well-formed calls against Ai2’s Asta MCP server (Semantic Scholar). Routes intent → tool, fills safe defaults, chains workflows, and warns you off the usual pitfalls. Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Hermes, opencode, OpenClaw, pi-mono, and any agent compatible with the Agent Skills format.

What it does

Search the Semantic Scholar academic corpus by keyword, title, author, or full-text snippet
Look up a paper from any ID (DOI, arXiv, PMID, PMCID, CorpusId, MAG, ACL, SHA, URL)
Traverse citations — find who cited a given paper, with filtering and pagination
Batch-lookup multiple papers in one call via get_paper_batch
Snippet search — retrieve ~500-word passages from paper bodies for evidence grounding
Author discovery — find researchers and list their publications
Zero-code integration — the skill is a pure instruction pack; all I/O goes through the Asta MCP server
Triggers automatically whenever the user asks for papers, citations, academic search, or literature discovery and Asta tools are registered

Multi-Platform Support

Works on any host that speaks MCP and loads Agent Skills — verified on Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Hermes, opencode, OpenClaw/ClawHub, and pi-mono; indexed on SkillsMP. LM Studio (0.3.17+) supports MCP but does not auto-load skills — paste SKILL.md into the system prompt (see LM Studio (manual mode) in the install guide).

Prerequisites

An agent host with MCP support (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, opencode, OpenClaw/ClawHub, pi-mono, etc.)
An Asta API key — request here
```
export ASTA_API_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
```

Installation

Two steps — register the MCP server first, then drop the skill into your host:

Register the Asta MCP server — per-host recipes for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor / Windsurf / Hermes, and LM Studio.
Install the skill — plugin marketplace (recommended) or manual clone.

Usage

See USAGE.md for natural-language query examples and a chained asta-skill + paper-fetch walkthrough with screenshots.

Part of the Agents365-ai research-skill family — pick the right tool for the job:

Skill	Niche	When to use
semanticscholar-skill	Direct Semantic Scholar API (Python)	When MCP isn’t available or you prefer scripted access
paper-fetch	DOI → PDF, 7-source fallback	When you need full text after finding citations
scholar-deep-research	8-phase literature review pipeline	When the user wants a structured cited report
zotero-research-assistant	Zotero library workflows	When references go into Zotero