with one click
asta-skill
// 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.
// 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.
[HINT] Download the complete skill directory including SKILL.md and all related files
| 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":["ASTA_API_KEY"]},"emoji":"🔭","mcp":{"name":"asta","type":"http","url":"https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1","headers":{"x-api-key":"${ASTA_API_KEY}"}}},"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":"0.3.0"} |
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.
https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1x-api-key header (request key at https://share.hsforms.com/1L4hUh20oT3mu8iXJQMV77w3ioxm)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.
| 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 |
| Find author by name | search_authors_by_name | Returns profile info |
| An author's publications | get_author_papers | Pass author id from previous call |
| Find passages mentioning X | snippet_search | ~500-word excerpts from paper bodies |
Search/citation tools accept publication_date_range (format YYYY-MM-DD:YYYY-MM-DD; year shorthand like "2021:", ":2015-01", "2015:2020" is also accepted) and venues (comma-separated) filters, plus fields for field selection — pass them whenever the user's intent constrains scope (e.g., "recent", "since 2022", "at NeurIPS").
fields parameter — avoid context blowupsget_paper / get_paper_batch accept a fields string. Never request citations or references via fields — a single highly-cited paper (e.g. Attention Is All You Need) returns 200k+ characters and will overflow the agent's context window. Use the dedicated get_citations tool for forward citations (it paginates). Asta does not provide a dedicated get_references tool — to retrieve a paper's reference list, use get_paper with fields=references only for papers you know have a small reference list (typically < 100).
Safe default fields for get_paper:
title,year,authors,venue,tldr,url,abstract
Add journal, publicationDate, fieldsOfStudy, isOpenAccess only when needed.
Asta's official fields list does not include externalIds, but the field is transparently passed through to the underlying Semantic Scholar API and works in practice. Add externalIds to fields to retrieve DOI, PubMed, PubMedCentral, ArXiv, MAG, DBLP, CorpusId. Caveats:
ArXiv + CorpusId.get_paper("DOI:...") lookup is not 100% reliable; some valid DOIs return not found. Prefer searching by title first, then reading externalIds off the result.search_papers_by_relevance(keyword, publication_date_range="<current_year-5>:", venues=?) → initial hits (compute the lower bound from today's date — e.g., in 2026 pass publication_date_range="2021:"; adjust or drop the filter if the user asks for older work)get_citations on the most influential, or snippet_search for specific claimsget_paper(DOI|arXiv|...) → verify seedget_citations(paperId) → forward expansionsearch_papers_by_relevance with seed title terms for sideways discoverysearch_authors_by_name(name) → pick correct profile (disambiguate by affiliation)get_author_papers(authorId) → full publication listsnippet_search(claim_query) → find passages making/supporting a claimget_paper(id) for full metadatasearch_paper_by_title before get_paper.abstract or venue, say so rather than inventing.| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
Empty abstract | Not all corpus papers have full text — use snippet_search, or fall back to title + TLDR |
| Author disambiguation uncertain | Inspect affiliations in search_authors_by_name results before calling get_author_papers |
429 Too Many Requests | Back off; batch with get_paper_batch instead of sequential get_paper calls |
| Need DOI / PubMed ID / arXiv ID | Add externalIds to fields (see "Retrieving DOI" above); fall back to ArXiv ID when DOI is absent |