Setup Guide

Connect your favorite AI assistant to ScienceStack via MCP.

Prerequisites

A ScienceStack account
An API key from Settings → API

Claude Desktop

Edit your Claude Desktop configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sciencestack": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://sciencestack.ai/api/mcp",
        "--header",
        "x-api-key:${SCIENCESTACK_API_KEY}"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SCIENCESTACK_API_KEY": "sk_live_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop after saving.

Note: The mcp-remote package bridges HTTP MCP servers to Claude Desktop's stdio transport. The --header flag passes your API key, and using ${VAR} syntax keeps secrets in the env block.

Cursor

Edit your Cursor MCP configuration:

macOS/Linux: ~/.cursor/mcp.json Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.cursor\mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sciencestack": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://sciencestack.ai/api/mcp",
        "--header",
        "x-api-key:${SCIENCESTACK_API_KEY}"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SCIENCESTACK_API_KEY": "sk_live_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code (CLI)

Run this command to add the MCP server:

claude mcp add sciencestack https://sciencestack.ai/api/mcp \
  --transport http \
  -H "x-api-key: sk_live_your_key_here"

Add --scope user to make it available across all projects instead of just the current directory.

Direct HTTP

You can call the MCP endpoint directly via HTTP. The server uses Streamable HTTP transport (returns SSE events):

curl -X POST https://sciencestack.ai/api/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -H "x-api-key: sk_live_your_key_here" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "tools/list",
    "id": 1
  }'

Verifying Connection

After configuration, try asking your AI assistant:

"Search for papers about transformer attention mechanisms"

If configured correctly, the assistant will use the searchPapers tool to query ScienceStack.

Troubleshooting

Tools not appearing?

Ensure your API key is valid
Restart the client after configuration changes
Check that npx is available in your PATH

Authentication errors?

Verify your API key at Settings → API
Ensure the key is set in the env block (not args)

On this page