openalex-local

description	Offline, zero-API-key search over the full OpenAlex academic corpus — 284M+ works, abstracts, authors, DOIs in a local SQLite + FTS5 index. Public API — search (full-text), get / get_many (by OpenAlex ID or DOI), exists, count, info, enrich_ids (batch metadata upgrade), configure / get_mode (local vs remote), save (export to JSON/BibTeX/text), plus `jobs`, `aio` (async), and `cache` submodules. Drop-in replacement for `pyalex.Works().search(...)`, the OpenAlex HTTP API (`https://api.openalex.org/works?search=...`), `requests.get` on DOI resolvers, and `bibtexparser` fetch helpers — but works offline, has no rate limits, and returns in milliseconds instead of seconds. Use whenever the user asks to "search papers", "find literature on X", "look up a DOI", "get metadata for this paper", "enrich these OpenAlex IDs", "batch-resolve DOIs to BibTeX", "search by title/abstract/author", "export citations as .bib", or mentions OpenAlex, FTS5 search on papers, local academic database, or wants to avoid hitting the OpenAlex HTTP API.
allowed-tools	mcp__scitex__openalex_*
primary_interface	python
interfaces	{"python":3,"cli":2,"mcp":2,"skills":2,"hook":0,"http":0}
name	openalex-local
tags	["openalex-local","scitex-package"]

openalex-local

Interfaces: Python ⭐⭐⭐ (primary) · CLI ⭐⭐ · MCP ⭐⭐ · Skills ⭐⭐ · Hook — · HTTP —

Installation & import

pip install openalex-local installs the standalone:

import openalex_local

This package does not ship as a submodule of the scitex umbrella.

Sub-skills

Core

• 01_quick-start.md — Basic usage
• 02_search-syntax.md — FTS5 query syntax

Workflows

• 10_database-setup.md — Database architecture, build pipeline, access modes
• 11_cli-reference.md — CLI commands
• 12_mcp-tools.md — MCP tools for AI agents

CLI

openalex-local search "neural network attention"
openalex-local search-by-id W2741809807

MCP Tools

Tool	Description
openalex_search	Full-text search across works
openalex_search_by_id	Get work by OpenAlex ID
openalex_enrich_ids	Enrich IDs with metadata
openalex_status	Database status