pallaprolus/mendeley-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that connects your Mendeley reference library to LLM applications like Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible clients.
Features
- **Search your library** - Find papers by title, author, abstract, or notes
- **Manage folders** - Browse, create, rename, delete, and nest collections
- **Get full metadata** - Retrieve complete document details including abstracts
- **Search global catalog** - Access Mendeley's 100M+ paper database
- **DOI lookup** - Find papers by their DOI
- **Manage documents** - Add, update, delete, and organize entries across folders
- **Read your annotations** - Surface the highlights and notes you made on PDFs
- **Export BibTeX** - Generate citation entries for a document or a whole folder
- **Download attached files** - Retrieve document files when Mendeley exposes them
Prerequisites
1. **Mendeley Account** - Sign up at mendeley.com (uses Elsevier authentication)
2. **Mendeley API App** - Register at dev.mendeley.com/myapps.html
- Sign in with your Elsevier credentials
- Click "Register a new app"
- Set redirect URL to http://localhost:8585/callback
- Select "Authorization code" flow (not Legacy)
- Note your **Client ID** and **Client Secret**
Installation
Using pip
Using uv (recommended)
> **Intel Macs.** The cryptography library, pulled in by the MCP SDK, stopped
> publishing macOS x86_64 wheels at version 49. On Intel Macs this package pins
> cryptography below 49 so installation works without a Rust toolchain. That
> pinned version no longer receives upstream security fixes; Apple Silicon,
> Linux, and Windows are unaffected and get the latest release.
Using Docker
Or build locally:
From source
Quick Start
1. Authenticate with Mendeley
Run the authentication wizard:
This will:
1. Prompt for your Client ID and Client Secret
2. Open your browser to authorize the app
3. Save your credentials securely in your system keyring
2. Add to Claude Desktop
Edit your Claude Desktop config file:
**macOS**: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
**Linux**: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
**Windows**: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
If installed with uv:
3. Restart Claude Desktop
The Mendeley tools should now be available in Claude.
Available Tools
| Tool | Description |
|------|-------------|
| mendeley_search_library | Search documents in your library |
| mendeley_get_document | Get full details of a specific document |
| mendeley_list_documents | List documents, optionally filtered by folder |
| mendeley_list_folders | List all folders/collections |
| mendeley_search_catalog | Search Mendeley's global paper database |
| mendeley_get_by_doi | Look up a paper by DOI |
| mendeley_add_document | Add a new document to your library |
| mendeley_update_document | Update bibliographic fields, tags, or keywords on an existing document |
| mendeley_delete_document | Permanently delete a document from your library |
| mendeley_create_folder | Create a folder in your library, optionally under a parent folder or group |
| mendeley_rename_folder | Rename an existing folder |
| mendeley_delete_folder | Delete an existing folder |
| mendeley_add_document_to_folder | Add an existing document to an existing folder |
| mendeley_remove_document_from_folder | Remove a document from a folder without deleting it |
| mendeley_get_annotations | Get your PDF highlights and notes on a document |
| mendeley_export_bibtex | Export a document or folder as BibTeX |
| mendeley_get_file_content | Download the first attached file for a library or catalog document |
| mendeley_get_document_text | Extract the full text of a document's attached PDF so the model can read the paper |
Resources
Besides the tools above, the server exposes two MCP resources. Resources take no
arguments; a client that supports them lists them alongside the server and lets you
attach one to a conversation as context, the way you would attach a file.
| Resource | Contents |
|----------|----------|
| mendeley://library/recent | The 10 most recently modified documents, in the same format as mendeley_list_documents |
| mendeley://library/folders | Every folder in the library with its id, name, and parent_id |
Tool Reference