# Lacuna Research MCP (remote · lacuna.tiptreesystems.com)

Search Lacuna's ML research graph for papers, directions, authors, venues, and hypotheses.

- Trust score: 76/100 (medium)
- Change this week: +3
- Registry status: active
- Liveness: live
- Owner verified: no
- Last scored: 2026-11-05

## Components

- remote · `lacuna.tiptreesystems.com`: 76/100 (this document), [markdown](https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/api-mcp.md), [page](https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/api-mcp)
- pypi · `lacuna-research-mcp`: 87/100, [markdown](https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/lacuna-research-mcp.md), [page](https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/lacuna-research-mcp)

## Channel facts

- Endpoint: `https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp`
- Transports: `streamable-http`
- Auth: `none`
- Version: `0.6.8`

## Trust breakdown

How this component scores in each security and reliability category. Every signal is checked automatically against the live server, and we only credit what we can confirm. Scores are 0–100 per category. Scoring method: https://verifymcp.io/docs/scoring (what has changed: https://verifymcp.io/docs/scoring/changelog)

Scored 2026-11-05.

- **Endpoint Security**: 74/100
  - The endpoint's TLS certificate is valid, in date, and uses a strong key.
  - No authorisation is required to call this server. Every tool declares its destructiveHint and none is destructive, so open access doesn't expose one.
  - HTTPS is enforced; there's no plaintext access path.
  - HSTS check failed: the Strict-Transport-Security header is absent.
  - DNSSEC check failed: this domain isn't protected by DNSSEC.
- **Transport & Reachability**: 100/100
  - Verified streamable-http transport via a live MCP handshake.
- **Schema Quality & AI Usability**: 56/100
  - AI-judged instruction clarity (good).
  - Context-footprint check failed: tool/resource definitions use about 2820 tokens (~216/item across 13 items; 13 tools + 0 resources), over budget; trim descriptions and params.
  - Usage-examples check failed: none of the tools include examples.
- **Stability & Change Management**: 77/100
  - Stability observed for 23 of 30 days with no destabilising changes; credit accrues until the full window elapses.
- **Tool Coverage**: 71/100
  - 100% of tools have a non-trivial description (not blank, and not just the tool's name).
  - 0% of tool parameters carry a description.
  - Structured output schemas are declared (100% of tools); any adoption earns full credit.
- **Tool Safety**: 100/100
  - No prompt-injection markers were found in the server instructions, tool names or descriptions we captured.
  - We read all 13 captured tool definition(s), and no name or description among them implies an irreversible operation.
  - An AI judge read all 14 captured unit(s) of tool text and found none that tries to manipulate the model reading it.
- **Capabilities**: 100/100
  - Implements a current MCP spec version (2026-07-28).

## Install

### How do I install the Lacuna Research MCP server?

Lacuna Research MCP is a hosted endpoint at https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp, so there is nothing to install locally. Ready-made configuration for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and 5 more is on this page, copied from each client's own documentation.

### Claude

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp 'https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp'
```

### Cursor

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp": {
      "url": "https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

### VS Code

```json
{
  "servers": {
    "tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

### Codex

```toml
[mcp_servers.tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp]
url = "https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp"
```

### opencode

```json
{
  "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
  "mcp": {
    "tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp": {
      "type": "remote",
      "url": "https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp",
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}
```

### OpenClaw

```bash
openclaw mcp add tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp --url 'https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp' --transport streamable-http
```

### Hermes

```yaml
mcp_servers:
  tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp:
    url: "https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp"
```

### Netclaw

```json
{
  "McpServers": {
    "tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp": {
      "Transport": "http",
      "Url": "https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

### Vellum

```bash
assistant mcp add tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp -t streamable-http -u 'https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp'
```

### Other

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

The mcpServers block is a cross-client convention. Remote transports vary, so check your client's docs.

## Changelog

Every change recorded for this component, newest first. Days that predate change tracking, or that we cannot explain, say so: "we were watching and nothing happened" and "we were not watching" are different claims.

### 2026-11-05 (score 76, 0)

- [security] Tool “get_institution_authors” rewrote its description, which is the text the model reads
- [security] Tool “get_institution_context” rewrote its description, which is the text the model reads
- [functional] Server version: 0.6.4 → 0.6.9

### 2026-11-04 (score 76, +1)

No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 70 to 73. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 21 days of observed history at the previous scan, 22 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

### 2026-11-02 (score 75, +1)

No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 63 to 67. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 19 days of observed history at the previous scan, 20 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

### 2026-10-30 (score 74, +1)

No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 53 to 57. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 16 days of observed history at the previous scan, 17 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

### 2026-10-28 (score 73, +1)

No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 47 to 50. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 14 days of observed history at the previous scan, 15 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

### 2026-10-26 (score 72, +1)

No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 40 to 43. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 12 days of observed history at the previous scan, 13 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

### 2026-10-24 (score 71, +1)

No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 33 to 37. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 10 days of observed history at the previous scan, 11 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

### 2026-10-22 (score 70, +1)

No change was recorded against any check on this day. Stability & Change Management went from 27 to 30. That category is still filling its 30-day observation window: 8 days of observed history at the previous scan, 9 at this one. The score rises as the window fills, whether or not the server changes.

## MCP tools (13)

### `search_lacuna` (~703 tokens)

Search Lacuna

Search Lacuna's ML/AI corpus for papers, research directions, authors,
    venues, institutions, novel research hypotheses, and research resources
    (code repositories, datasets, models, and demos linked to papers).

    For novel ML/AI research ideas, use search_type="hypothesis", then
    get_hypothesis on promising results.

    search_type accepts all, cluster, paper, author, institution, venue,
    hypothesis, or resource. Use paper for literature and get_paper to read a
    result. Use other sources for biographies, news, and non-research web
    content.

    Resources: search_type="resource" searches GitHub repositories, Hugging
    Face datasets/models, and Zenodo records that Lacuna has linked to at least
    one paper. To find benchmark or evaluation datasets, use
    search_type="resource" with resource_kind="dataset" (for example query
    "image classification benchmark" or a dataset name like "ImageNet").
    resource_kind accepts codebase, dataset, model, or demo (one value or a
    list); provider accepts github, huggingface, or zenodo. Both filters require
    search_type "resource" or "all" (with either filter set, only resources are
    returned). Each result has an external `url`, a Lacuna `context_url`, and
    `linked_paper_count`; call get_resource on its id to list the linked papers
    (with their relationship to the resource), then get_paper on those papers
    for reported results and numbers. Resource search does not support
    date_from/date_to, venue, year sorting, or semantic ranking.

    ranking_profile accepts:
    - default / lexical (default): production ranking; relevance-sorted paper
      searches combine lexical and semantic retrieval when fields is unset.
    - semantic: conceptual paper retrieval; supported for paper and all.
    - bm25_title_abstract / bm25: lexical paper matching over those fields.

    sort accepts relevance (default), year_desc, or year_asc. Semantic ranking
    cannot use year sorting; constrain re…

Input parameters:

- `author_id_or_url`
- `date_from`
- `date_to`
- `fields`
- `limit` (integer)
- `offset` (integer)
- `provider`
- `query` (string, required)
- `ranking_profile`
- `resource_kind`
- `search_type` (string)
- `sort` (string)
- `venue`

### `get_hypothesis` (~151 tokens)

Get Research Proposal

Fetch a generated novel ML/AI research proposal from Lacuna.

    Use after search_lacuna(search_type="hypothesis") to inspect a proposal.

    view selects the response shape:

    - "context" (default, recommended): compact single-fetch proposal context —
      summary_markdown, abstract, and linked directions, with the raw upstream
      record (whose markdown duplicates summary_markdown) dropped server-side.
    - "full": the server's version record, including version history and signal
      counts. Proposal bodies are in versions[].markdown. Use only when you need
      versions or signals.

Input parameters:

- `hypothesis_id_or_url` (string, required)
- `view` (string)

### `get_direction` (~145 tokens)

Get Research Direction

Fetch a Lacuna research direction/cluster.

    Use a numeric cluster ID (for example 25005) or a direction URL ending in
    that number.

    view selects the response shape (`context` typically contains the fields
    `full` provides plus the agent-oriented summary content):

    - "context" (default, recommended): compact agent-oriented summary with
      summary_markdown, capped papers/authors/related_directions, and
      truncation markers.
    - "full": raw upstream cluster record only. Cheaper than context when you
      only need basic cluster metadata.

Input parameters:

- `cluster_id_or_url` (required)
- `view` (string)

### `get_direction_papers` (~149 tokens)

List Direction Papers

Fetch paginated papers associated with a Lacuna research direction/cluster.

    view selects the per-paper shape:

    - "compact" (default, recommended): citation-ready rows (id, url, title, year,
      venue, a few authors, abstract snippet). Drops the raw upstream info blob and
      levels.cluster internals that otherwise dominate the payload.
    - "full": the complete upstream paper records. Much larger; use only when you
      need the raw metadata (openalex/dblp/arxiv ids, etc.).

Input parameters:

- `cluster_id_or_url` (required)
- `limit` (integer)
- `page` (integer)
- `view` (string)

### `get_paper` (~358 tokens)

Get Paper

Fetch a Lacuna paper by artifact id or paper URL.

    include_resources adds linked resources (code repositories, datasets, models,
    and demos) in context and full views by default. Pass False to omit them;
    other views ignore this option. Pass a resource entry's id to get_resource
    for further details.

    view selects the response shape. `context` requests Lacuna's compact
    agent-oriented context by default, while the four single-field views
    (blog/figures/concepts/neighbors) return isolated sub-resources:

    - "context" (default, recommended): agent-oriented summary with
      summary_markdown, authors, and a small figure preview. Start here for almost
      everything. Available versions are included when present; to read another
      version, use its artifact ID from the returned version list.
    - "full": raw upstream paper record. Cheaper than context when you only
      need basic metadata.
    - "preview": compact card with unique fields `excerpt`, `excerpt_kind`,
      `bookmarked`. Use for citation-style display.
    - "blog": just the summary_markdown content, without the rest of the
      context envelope.
    - "figures": just the figures list.
    - "concepts": just the concepts list.
    - "neighbors": just the related-papers list.

    figure_limit (context view only) caps the figure preview (server default 3).
    Pass 0 to suppress figure previews while keeping a `figures_truncated` signal.

Input parameters:

- `artifact_id_or_url` (string, required)
- `figure_limit`
- `include_resources` (boolean)
- `view` (string)

### `get_resource` (~165 tokens)

Get Resource

Fetch a Lacuna research resource (code repository, dataset, model, or demo).

    Accepts a resource artifact ID (art_...) or a Lacuna resource URL
    containing that ID (/resource/<slug>/art_...).

    The response includes the external url, a summary, facets (tasks, modalities,
    size, license, access), provider metrics, a README/card excerpt,
    `publications` (linked papers with paper_id, title,
    venue, year, and relationship such as dataset_for or code_for), related
    research directions, and other resources mentioned by this one. Pass a
    publication's paper_id to get_paper to read the paper and its reported
    results.

Input parameters:

- `resource_id_or_url` (string, required)

### `get_author_papers` (~48 tokens)

List Author Papers

Fetch one page of an author's papers, ordered from newest to oldest.

Input parameters:

- `author_id_or_url` (string, required)
- `limit` (integer)
- `offset` (integer)

### `get_author_directions` (~44 tokens)

List Author Directions

Fetch one page of an author's named research directions.

Input parameters:

- `author_id_or_url` (string, required)
- `limit` (integer)
- `offset` (integer)

### `get_author_context` (~230 tokens)

Get Author

Fetch agent-oriented context for a Lacuna author.

    Author profiles describe research output (papers, directions, impact). A
    free-text `affiliation` field may be present but can be incomplete or
    outdated and may not represent current employment; the corpus has no
    biography or employment history, so do not infer those from this data.

    view selects the response shape:

    - "context" (default, recommended): Lacuna's compact author context — capped
      readable papers and an `impact_directions` list (named research directions)
      in place of the raw numeric `impact_clusters` telemetry, with the duplicated
      nested author record dropped server-side.
    - "full": the bounded full-shape author context (raw `impact_clusters`,
      nested author record; server collections are capped at 100).

    Set include_neighbors=True to include similar authors as named, linkable
    records. Neighbor computation may add significant server latency.

Input parameters:

- `author_id_or_url` (string, required)
- `include_neighbors` (boolean)
- `view` (string)

### `get_author_neighbors` (~46 tokens)

List Similar Authors

Fetch one ranked page of neighboring/similar Lacuna authors.

Input parameters:

- `author_id_or_url` (string, required)
- `limit` (integer)
- `offset` (integer)

### `get_venue_context` (~192 tokens)

Get Venue

Fetch agent-oriented context for a Lacuna venue, optionally scoped to a year.

    Venue keys are opaque hashes (e.g. "d7bf22905bd6"), never human-readable
    names like "icml". Find the key first via search_lacuna(search_type="venue")
    or pass a /venue/... page URL.

    view selects the response shape:

    - "context" (default, recommended): compact venue context — capped top authors,
      non-placeholder top clusters, and a recent-activity slice (the requested
      `year` is always included), with the duplicated venue block and full year
      histogram dropped server-side.
    - "full": the complete venue context (full year histogram, all top authors/
      clusters, duplicated venue record).

Input parameters:

- `venue_key_or_url` (string, required)
- `view` (string)
- `year`

### `get_institution_context` (~192 tokens)

Get Institution

Fetch agent-oriented context for a Lacuna institution (a university, lab or company).

    The context summarizes the institution's research output: its paper and
    author counts and the authors who publish most often under it.
    Affiliations come from the author affiliations listed on published papers,
    not from staff directories, and may be incomplete or out of date. The
    response has no contact details, biographies or employment records.

    view selects the response shape:

    - "context" (default, recommended): compact institution context — capped top
      authors with the duplicated institution block dropped server-side.
    - "full": the complete institution context shape (duplicated institution
      record and a bounded author list with explicit truncation metadata).

    Use get_institution_authors to page through the complete author list.

Input parameters:

- `institution_key_or_url` (string, required)
- `view` (string)

### `get_institution_authors` (~158 tokens)

List Institution Authors

Fetch one page of authors who list a Lacuna institution on their papers.

    Each author appears because published papers list this institution as one
    of their affiliations. This is a record of research output, not a staff
    directory: it may be incomplete or out of date and does not show current
    employment. Each entry has the author's name, Lacuna
    page and paper count; there are no contact details or other personal data.

    Results are ordered by paper count. Use authors_total, authors_returned,
    authors_offset, and authors_truncated to page through the complete list.

Input parameters:

- `institution_key_or_url` (string, required)
- `limit` (integer)
- `offset` (integer)

## Diagnostics

Captured diagnostic sections: TLS, DNSSEC, Authorisation, Transports. The full working is on the page: https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/api-mcp#diagnostics

## Score history

- 2026-11-05: 76
- 2026-11-04: 76
- 2026-11-03: 75
- 2026-11-02: 75
- 2026-11-01: 74
- 2026-10-31: 74
- 2026-10-30: 74
- 2026-10-29: 73
- 2026-10-28: 73
- 2026-10-27: 72
- 2026-10-26: 72
- 2026-10-25: 71
- 2026-10-24: 71
- 2026-10-23: 70
- 2026-10-22: 70
- 2026-10-21: 69
- 2026-10-20: 69
- 2026-10-19: 68
- 2026-10-18: 68
- 2026-10-17: 67
- 2026-10-16: 67
- 2026-10-15: 67
- 2026-10-14: 66
- 2026-10-13: 66

## Common questions

### What is the Lacuna Research MCP server?

Lacuna Research MCP is listed in the public MCP registry as io.github.tiptreesystems/lacuna-research-mcp. Search Lacuna's ML research graph for papers, directions, authors, venues, and hypotheses. This page covers its hosted endpoint (https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp).

### Is the Lacuna Research MCP server safe to use?

Lacuna Research MCP scores 76 out of 100 on VerifyMCP. 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 Lacuna Research MCP server expose?

Lacuna Research MCP exposes 13 tools: search_lacuna, get_hypothesis, get_direction, get_direction_papers, get_paper, and 8 more. Their descriptions and schemas cost roughly 2,581 tokens of context every time the server is loaded.

### Does the Lacuna Research MCP server require authentication?

No. We connected to Lacuna Research MCP without credentials and it answered, so anything it exposes is reachable by anyone who knows the address.

### Is the Lacuna Research MCP server still maintained?

Lacuna Research MCP 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.

## Links

- Remote endpoint: https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/api/mcp
- Repository: https://github.com/tiptreesystems/lacuna-research-mcp
- Website: https://lacuna.tiptreesystems.com/
- Changelog RSS feed: https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/api-mcp.xml
- Changelog JSON feed: https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/api-mcp.json
- HTML version of this page: https://verifymcp.io/servers/tiptreesystems-lacuna-research-mcp/api-mcp