Research Chain
NPM · @PIPEWORX/MCP-RESEARCH-CHAIN · 2 COMPONENTS
One call, one paper: everything openly available around it — full text, license, datasets, code…
Available components
Last scanned (2 hours ago)
Scores higher than 65% of npm servers
Category Education and Research
How this component scores in each security and reliability category. Every signal is checked automatically from public evidence about the published package, including repeated runs of it in an isolated sandbox, and we only credit what we can confirm. How we score → Why this is hard to score →
Supply Chain Security100
- No malware found by supply-chain analysis.Pass
- No known CVEs affecting this package version or its production dependencies.Pass
- No install/post-install scripts declared.Pass
- No production dependencies, so there is no dependency health to assess. View diagnostics → Pass
Provenance & Transparency97
- Source repository is publicly reachable at the declared URL. View diagnostics → Pass
- Cryptographically verified build provenance (signed, bound to pipeworx-io/mcp-research-chain). View diagnostics → Pass
- Clear OSI-approved license (MIT).Pass
- Actively maintained (last published 0 days ago).Pass
- Disclosure check failed: no security disclosure policy was found in the source repository. See how to fix → Fail
Schema Quality & AI Usability54
- AI-judged instruction clarity (good).Pass
- Context-footprint check failed: tool/resource definitions use about 467 tokens (~467/item across 1 items; 1 tools + 0 resources), over budget; trim descriptions and params. See how to fix → Fail
- Usage-examples check failed: none of the tools include examples. See how to fix → Fail
Stability & Change Management23
- Stability observed for 7 of 30 days with no destabilising changes; credit accrues until the full window elapses.Partial
Tool Coverage100
- 100% of tools have a non-trivial description (not blank, and not just the tool's name).Pass
- 100% of tool parameters carry a description.Pass
Tool Safety100
- No prompt-injection markers were found in the server instructions, tool names or descriptions we captured.Pass
- We read all 1 captured tool definition(s), and no name or description among them implies an irreversible operation.Pass
- An AI judge read all 2 captured unit(s) of tool text and found none that tries to manipulate the model reading it.Pass
Capabilities100
- Implements a supported MCP spec version (2025-11-25); the latest is 2026-07-28.Pass
Every change we have recorded for this component, newest first. Security-relevant changes are always shown. ▲ marks a change for the better, ▼ a change for the worse; unmarked changes are neutral.
- 4 Nov 26 +3
- Tool safety: pass → unverified ▼ security
- Stability: Stability not yet verified: we do not have a sandbox capture of the MCP schema this version of the package serves yet. security
- Capabilities: pass → unverified ▼ functional
- Tool coverage: 100 → unverified ▼ functional
- Stability: unverified → 0.20 ▲ functional
- First check of Schema quality: unverified functional
- Package version: 0.2.0 → 0.2.1 functional
- 2 Nov 26 0
- Security disclosure: unverified → fail ▼ functional
- 1 Nov 26 0
- Security disclosure: fail → unverified ▼ functional
- 30 Oct 26 0
- Security disclosure: unverified → fail ▼ functional
- 29 Oct 26 77
First indexed and scored.
Diagnostic detail from the automated scan of this channel: what the scanner observed at each step, so you can see exactly where a check passed or failed. It is informational only and never changes the trust score.
Captured 5 Nov 2026 · Analysed npm/@pipeworx/mcp-research-chain@0.2.1
Provenance Verified
A signed build attestation was found and verified, binding this exact artifact to the source repository it claims to come from.
| Result | Verified |
|---|---|
| Ecosystem | npm |
| Reason | Verified |
| Discovered via | Registry attestation endpoint |
| Source repo | pipeworx-io/mcp-research-chain |
| Certificate issuer | https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com |
| Certificate SAN | https://github.com/pipeworx-io/mcp-research-chain/.github/workflows/publish.yml@refs/heads/main |
| Rekor log index | 3691882978 |
| Predicate type | SLSA build provenance https://slsa.dev/provenance/v1 |
| Subject digest | sha512:f4aa4d98ee3961e39315231ce4d84a8ca17d533b661d083aaff4433f8cc4bd97a05e6dd9dd2fee4b39c69f4d0cc8f1a9004e44bceb1e583e456579dda |
Background: How many MCP packages publish verified provenance →
Dependencies 0 packages
| Packages resolved | 0 |
|---|---|
| Tree resolution | Complete |
Background: SBOMs and build attestations, explained →
The tools this component advertises to a client, with an estimated token cost for each. Expand a tool to see its parameters and schema. The per-tool counts are indicative and are not scored directly; the schema's total context footprint is one signal in Schema Quality & AI Usability. A tool's description is untrusted text the model reads on every call, which is what makes this list a security surface and not just an inventory: how tool poisoning works →
research_chain ~414
Everything openly available around a paper, in ONE call: full text, license, datasets, code, and citations. Given a DOI, PMID, or arXiv id, walks paper (Crossref + OpenAlex) -> open copies with PER-COPY license and version (Unpaywall + PubMed Central — never collapses "free to read" into "permitted to reuse") -> datasets that cite it (DataCite relatedIdentifiers) -> code/materials that implement it (Zenodo, Hugging Face Papers) -> papers that cite it (Semantic Scholar, falling back to OpenAlex's citation graph if Semantic Scholar is rate-limited or returns nothing — `citing.source` says which one answered) -> retraction status (Crossref/Retraction Watch). Use for "what datasets/code are linked to <DOI>", "is this paper retracted", "find an open copy of <DOI> and its license", "who has cited <paper>". Each leg is independently fetched — a slow/dead upstream is listed in sources_failed rather than failing the whole call.
| Name | Type | Req | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| arxiv_id | string | – | arXiv id, e.g. "2312.00752". Resolved to arXiv's own DataCite DOI (10.48550/arXiv.<id>) — best-effort for pre-2022 papers. |
| doi | string | – | DOI of the paper, e.g. "10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2" (a doi.org URL is also accepted). |
| max_citing | number | – | Max citing papers to return (1-25, default 10). |
| max_datasets | number | – | Max datasets to return (1-100, default 25). DataCite's `total` count is always returned even when truncated. |
| pmid | string | – | PubMed ID, e.g. "32015507". Resolved to a DOI via NCBI's ID Converter. |
No output schema declared.
No examples provided.
How do I install the Research Chain MCP server?
Research Chain runs locally as an npm package, launched with npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-research-chain. Ready-made configuration for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and 5 more is on this page, copied from each client's own documentation.
npm · @pipeworx/mcp-research-chain
claude mcp add pipeworx-io-research-chain -- npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-research-chain
What is the Research Chain MCP server?
Research Chain is an MCP server listed in the public MCP registry as io.github.pipeworx-io/research-chain. One call, one paper: everything openly available around it, full text, license, datasets, code… This page covers its npm package (@pipeworx/mcp-research-chain).
Is the Research Chain MCP server safe to use?
Research Chain scores 80 out of 100 on VerifyMCP. We found no known CVEs affecting it as of 5 November 2026. It declares no install or post-install scripts. Its build provenance is signed and verified. That is a record of what we were able to check automatically, not an endorsement. The category breakdown on this page shows every signal behind the number, including the ones we could not confirm.
What tools does the Research Chain MCP server expose?
Research Chain exposes 1 tool: research_chain. Their descriptions and schemas cost roughly 414 tokens of context every time the server is loaded.
Is the Research Chain MCP server still maintained?
Research Chain is still listed as active in the MCP registry. We last reached this channel on 5 November 2026. Those dates come from our own scans of the registry and the channel itself, not from anything the publisher announced.
What licence is the Research Chain MCP server under?
Research Chain declares the MIT licence, which is OSI-approved. That covers the source only, and says nothing about the cost of any service it calls.