How to integrate Semanticscholar MCP with Codex

Codex is one of the most popular coding harnesses out there. And MCP makes the experience even better. With Semanticscholar MCP integration, you can draft, triage, summarise emails, and much more, all without leaving the terminal or app, whichever you prefer.

Composio removes the Authentication handling completely from you. We handle the entire integration lifecycle, and all you need to do is just copy the URL below, authenticate inside Codex, and start using it.

Why use Composio?

Apart from a managed and hosted MCP server, you will get:

• CodeAct: A dedicated workbench that allows GPT to write its code to handle complex tool chaining. Reduces to-and-fro with LLMs for frequent tool calling.
• Large tool responses: Handle them to minimise context rot.
• Dynamic just-in-time access to 20,000 tools across 870+ other Apps for cross-app workflows. It loads the tools you need, so GPTs aren't overwhelmed by tools you don't need.

How to install Semanticscholar MCP in Codex

Codex CLI

Run the command in your terminal.

This will auto-redirect you to the Rube authentication page.

Once you're authenticated, you will be able to access the tools.

Verify the installation by running:

codex mcp list

If you otherwise prefer to use config.toml, add the following URL to it. You can get the bearer token from rube.app → Use Rube → MCP URL → Generate token

[projects."/home/user/composio"]
trust_level = "untrusted"

[mcp_servers.rube]
bearer_token_env_var = "your bearer token"
enabled = true
url = "https://rube.app/mcp"

Codex in VS Code

If you have installed Codex in VS Code.

Then: ⚙️ → MCP Settings → + Add servers → Streamable HTTP:

Add the Rube MCP URL: https://rube.app/mcp and the bearer token.

To verify, click on the Open config.toml

Make sure it's there:

[mcp_servers.composio_rube]
bearer_token_env_var = "your bearer token"
enabled = true
url = "https://rube.app/mcp"

Codex App

Codex App follows the same approach as VS Code.

1. Click ⚙️ on the bottom left → MCP Servers → + Add servers → Streamable HTTP:

2. Restart and verify if it's there in .codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.composio_rube]
bearer_token_env_var = "your bearer token"
enabled = true
url = "https://rube.app/mcp"

3. Save, restart the extension, and start working.

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.

Conclusion

You've successfully integrated Semanticscholar with Codex using Composio's Rube MCP server. Now you can interact with Semanticscholar directly from your terminal, VS Code, or the Codex App using natural language commands.

Key benefits of this setup:

• Seamless integration across CLI, VS Code, and standalone app
• Natural language commands for Semanticscholar operations
• Managed authentication through Composio's Rube
• Access to 20,000+ tools across 870+ apps for cross-app workflows
• CodeAct workbench for complex tool chaining

Next steps:

• Try asking Codex to perform various Semanticscholar operations
• Explore cross-app workflows by connecting more toolkits
• Build automation scripts that leverage Codex's AI capabilities