How to connect Semanticscholar to Claude Cowork

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Introduction

Cowork is Anthropic's AI agent for knowledge work. Think of it as Claude Code for everything else. It works autonomously with your computer, local files, and applications to accomplish complex tasks.

This guide walks you through the easiest and most secure way to connect your Semanticscholar account to Cowork via Composio Connect, enabling it to find the latest papers on graph neural networks, list citations for a specific research paper, summarize an author’s recent publications, and more such actions on your behalf without compromising your account security.

Also integrate Semanticscholar with

Connecting Semanticscholar to Claude Cowork

1. Open Customize

In Claude Desktop, click Customize in the left sidebar, then select Connectors and click the + icon at the top.

Claude Desktop connectors screen with Add custom connector selected

2. Add the Composio MCP server

Click Add custom connector and paste in the Composio MCP server URL:

bash
https://connect.composio.dev/mcp
Add custom connector dialog with Composio MCP server URL

3. Authorize in your browser

Click Connect. You'll be redirected to a browser window where you can authorize Composio to continue.

Composio authorization screen for Claude Cowork

4. Connect your Semanticscholar account

Back in Cowork, ask the agent to connect to Semanticscholar or give it any Semanticscholar-related task.

For example, ask Cowork to:

  • "Find the latest papers on graph neural networks"
  • "List citations for a specific research paper"
  • "Summarize an author’s recent publications"

It will prompt you to authenticate and authorize access.

That's it. Composio's tools are now available in Cowork, and your Semanticscholar account is ready to use.

What is Claude Cowork?

Claude Cowork is Anthropic's agent for general knowledge work. It can use your computer, files, and connected applications to complete longer-running tasks across your work tools.

With Composio Connect, Cowork can securely access apps like Semanticscholar through MCP without you sharing account credentials directly with the agent.

What is the Semanticscholar MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Semanticscholar MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Semantic Scholar account. It provides structured and secure access to scholarly data, so your agent can search for academic papers, retrieve detailed author profiles, analyze citations, and explore references or publication histories on your behalf.

  • Comprehensive literature search and discovery: Let your agent search for academic papers by topic, author, or relevance and retrieve lists of matching publications with rich metadata.
  • In-depth paper and author insights: Ask your agent to fetch detailed information about specific papers—including titles, abstracts, authors, and publication years—or get complete profiles for researchers and their entire body of work.
  • Citation and reference analysis: Enable your agent to trace the impact of a paper by pulling its citations or explore the foundational research it builds upon by listing its references.
  • Batch retrieval for large-scale research: Efficiently gather details on multiple papers or authors at once, streamlining reviews and bibliometric analyses across large datasets.
  • Bulk and relevance-based queries: Use advanced bulk search and filtering to identify up to thousands of papers at a time, making it easy for your agent to support systematic literature reviews and academic data exploration.

Supported Tools & Triggers

Tools
Details about an authorExamples: https://api.
Details about an author s papersRetrieves a list of papers authored by a specific researcher identified by their unique semantic scholar author id.
Details about a paperExamples: https://api.
Details about a paper s authorsRetrieves the list of authors for a specific paper identified by its unique paper id in the semantic scholar database.
Details about a paper s citationsRetrieves a list of citations for a specific academic paper using its unique semantic scholar paper id.
Details about a paper s referencesRetrieves the list of references cited by a specific paper in the semantic scholar database.
Get details for multiple authors at onceRetrieves detailed information for multiple authors from semantic scholar in a single api call.
Get details for multiple papers at onceThe semanticscholar paper batch endpoint allows users to retrieve data for multiple academic papers in a single api call.
Paper bulk searchBehaves similarly to /paper/search, but is intended for bulk retrieval of basic paper data without search relevance: text query is optional and supports boolean logic for document matching.
Paper relevance searchThe searchpapers endpoint allows users to search for academic papers within the semantic scholar database.
Paper title searchBehaves similarly to /paper/search, but is intended for retrieval of a single paper based on closest title match to given query.
Search for authors by nameThe authorsearch endpoint allows users to search for authors within the semantic scholar database.
Suggest paper query completionsTo support interactive query-completion, return minimal information about papers matching a partial query example: https://api.
Text snippet searchReturn the text snippets that most closely match the query.

How to build Semanticscholar MCP Agent with another framework

FAQ

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Semanticscholar MCP?

With a standalone Semanticscholar MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Semanticscholar tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Semanticscholar and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Can I use Tool Router MCP with Claude Cowork?

Yes, you can. Claude Cowork fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Semanticscholar tools.

Can I manage the permissions and scopes for Semanticscholar while using Tool Router?

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Semanticscholar scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

How safe is my data with Composio Tool Router?

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Semanticscholar data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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