apaper-plugin

An academic paper-authoring toolkit for AI coding agents. It bundles writing and figure skills together with the apaper-mcp paper-research MCP server so a single setup gives your agent everything it needs to search the literature, draft IEEE-style prose, and generate publication- quality figures.

Install it as a Claude Code plugin, or add the skills and MCP server to OpenAI Codex (or any other agent supported by the skills CLI).

What's inside

Skills (skills/)

Sourced from isomoes/skills:

Skill	Purpose
writing	Revise and strengthen academic prose; applies IEEE journal rules for journal work.
creating-figures	Publication-quality scientific figures (TikZ/CeTZ).

MCP server (.mcp.json)

Wires up @ai4paper/apaper-mcp, which exposes tools for searching IACR / DBLP / Google Scholar / arXiv, collecting BibTeX entries, and downloading papers. The server is launched on demand via npx -y @ai4paper/apaper-mcp, so no global install is needed.

Install for Claude Code

From a marketplace (recommended)

This repo ships its own .claude-plugin/marketplace.json, so you can add it as a marketplace and install in two commands:

/plugin marketplace add ai4paper/apaper-plugin
/plugin install apaper-plugin@apaper

The bundled MCP server is registered automatically. Once the plugin is enabled, the skills are namespaced under the plugin name, e.g. /apaper-plugin:writing.

Install for Codex

Codex doesn't use the Claude plugin system, so the skills and MCP server are added separately.

Skills — via the skills CLI

Use the skills CLI (npx skills) to copy the skills into Codex. No global install — npx fetches it on demand:

# Install both skills for Codex (project-local, under .agents/skills/)
npx skills add ai4paper/apaper-plugin -a codex

# Install globally instead (under ~/.codex/skills/)
npx skills add ai4paper/apaper-plugin -a codex -g

# Pick specific skills by name
npx skills add ai4paper/apaper-plugin -a codex --skill writing creating-figures

Add -y to skip the confirmation prompt, or --list to preview the available skills without installing.

MCP server — via config.toml

Register apaper-mcp in Codex's config (~/.codex/config.toml for all projects, or .codex/config.toml inside a trusted project):

[mcp_servers.apaper-mcp]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@ai4paper/apaper-mcp"]

Or add it from the command line, which writes the same entry for you:

codex mcp add apaper-mcp -- npx -y @ai4paper/apaper-mcp

Run /mcp in the Codex TUI to confirm the server is connected.

Local development

Clone this repo and point Claude Code at it directly:

git clone https://github.com/ai4paper/apaper-plugin
claude --plugin-dir ./apaper-plugin

After editing skills or the manifest, run /reload-plugins in Claude Code to pick up the changes without restarting.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.