| name | asta-skill |
| description | Domain expertise for Ai2 Asta MCP tools (Semantic Scholar corpus). Intent-to-tool routing, safe defaults, workflow patterns, and pitfall warnings for academic paper search, citation traversal, and author discovery. |
| license | MIT |
| homepage | https://github.com/Agents365-ai/asta-skill |
| compatibility | Requires an MCP-capable host (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Hermes, OpenClaw/ClawHub) with the Asta MCP server registered at https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1 using an x-api-key header. The skill does not make HTTP calls itself. |
| platforms | ["macos","linux","windows"] |
| metadata | {"openclaw":{"requires":{"env":"[Truncated]"},"emoji":"🔭","mcp":{"name":"asta","type":"http","url":"https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1","headers":"[Truncated]"}},"hermes":{"tags":["asta","semantic-scholar","academic","paper-search","citation","mcp"],"category":"research","requires_tools":["mcp"],"related_skills":["semanticscholar-skill","zotero-research-assistant","literature-review"]},"pimo":{"category":"research","tags":["asta","semantic-scholar","academic","paper-search","citation","mcp"]},"author":"Agents365-ai","version":"0.2.7"} |
Asta MCP — Academic Paper Search
Asta is Ai2's Scientific Corpus Tool, exposing the Semantic Scholar academic graph over MCP (streamable HTTP transport). This skill tells agents which Asta tool to call for which intent, and how to compose them into useful workflows.
Update Notifications
If <skill_directory>/.last_version_check is missing or >24h old, fetch the version from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Agents365-ai/asta-skill/main/SKILL.md, compare to the local version, then write the current Unix timestamp to .last_version_check. If remote is newer, tell the user once: 📢 asta-skill X.Y.Z → A.B.C. Run 'git -C <skill_directory> pull' to update. Silently skip on any failure. Never run git pull yourself.
Prerequisite Check
Before invoking any tool, verify the Asta MCP server is registered in the host agent. Tool names will be prefixed by the MCP server name chosen at install time (commonly asta__<tool> or mcp__asta__<tool>). If no Asta tools are visible, direct the user to the Installation section below.
Tool Map — Intent → Asta Tool
| User intent | Asta tool | Notes |
|---|
| Broad topic search | search_papers_by_relevance | Supports venue + date filters |
| Known paper title | search_paper_by_title | Optional venue restriction |
| Known DOI / arXiv / PMID / CorpusId / MAG / ACL / SHA / URL | get_paper | Single-paper lookup |
| Multiple known IDs at once | get_paper_batch | Batch lookup — prefer over N sequential get_paper calls |
| Who cited paper X | get_citations | Citation traversal with filters, paginated |
|
