asta-skill

What this skill does

# Asta MCP — Academic Paper Search

Asta is Ai2's Scientific Corpus Tool, exposing the Semantic Scholar academic graph over MCP (streamable HTTP transport). This skill tells agents **which Asta tool to call for which intent**, and how to compose them into useful workflows.

- **MCP endpoint:** `https://asta-tools.allen.ai/mcp/v1`
- **Auth:** `x-api-key` header (request key at https://share.hsforms.com/1L4hUh20oT3mu8iXJQMV77w3ioxm)
- **Transport:** streamable HTTP

## Prerequisite Check

Before invoking any tool, verify the Asta MCP server is registered in the host agent. Tool names will be prefixed by the MCP server name chosen at install time (commonly `asta__<tool>` or `mcp__asta__<tool>`). If no Asta tools are visible, direct the user to the **Installation** section below.

## Tool Map — Intent → Asta Tool

| User intent | Asta tool | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Broad topic search | `search_papers_by_relevance` | Supports venue + date filters |
| Known paper title | `search_paper_by_title` | Optional venue restriction |
| Known DOI / arXiv / PMID / CorpusId / MAG / ACL / SHA / URL | `get_paper` | Single-paper lookup |
| Multiple known IDs at once | `get_paper_batch` | Batch lookup — prefer over N sequential `get_paper` calls |
| Who cited paper X | `get_citations` | Citation traversal with filters, paginated |
| Find author by name | `search_authors_by_name` | Returns profile info |
| An author's publications | `get_author_papers` | Pass author id from previous call |
| Find passages mentioning X | `snippet_search` | ~500-word excerpts from paper bodies |

Search/citation tools accept **`publication_date_range`** (format `YYYY-MM-DD:YYYY-MM-DD`; year shorthand like `"2021:"`, `":2015-01"`, `"2015:2020"` is also accepted) and **`venues`** (comma-separated) filters, plus **`fields`** for field selection — pass them whenever the user's intent constrains scope (e.g., "recent", "since 2022", "at NeurIPS").

### ⚠️ `fields` parameter — avoid context blowups

`get_paper` / `get_paper_batch` accept a `fields` string. **Never request `citations` or `references`** via `fields` — a single highly-cited paper (e.g. *Attention Is All You Need*) returns 200k+ characters and will overflow the agent's context window. Use the dedicated `get_citations` tool for forward citations (it paginates). Asta does not provide a dedicated `get_references` tool — to retrieve a paper's reference list, use `get_paper` with `fields=references` only for papers you know have a small reference list (typically < 100).

Safe default `fields` for `get_paper`:
```
title,year,authors,venue,tldr,url,abstract
```
Add `journal`, `publicationDate`, `fieldsOfStudy`, `isOpenAccess` only when needed.

### Retrieving DOI / external IDs (undocumented but supported)

Asta's official `fields` list does **not** include `externalIds`, but the field is transparently passed through to the underlying Semantic Scholar API and works in practice. Add `externalIds` to `fields` to retrieve `DOI`, `PubMed`, `PubMedCentral`, `ArXiv`, `MAG`, `DBLP`, `CorpusId`. Caveats:
- Not all papers have a DOI — pure arXiv preprints often only return `ArXiv` + `CorpusId`.
- `get_paper("DOI:...")` lookup is not 100% reliable; some valid DOIs return `not found`. Prefer searching by title first, then reading `externalIds` off the result.
- Since this is undocumented, treat it as best-effort and degrade gracefully if a future Asta release drops it.

## Workflow Patterns

### Pattern 1 — Topic Discovery
1. `search_papers_by_relevance(keyword, publication_date_range="<current_year-5>:", venues=?)` → initial hits (compute the lower bound from today's date — e.g., in 2026 pass `publication_date_range="2021:"`; adjust or drop the filter if the user asks for older work)
2. Rank/present top N by citationCount + recency
3. Offer follow-ups: `get_citations` on the most influential, or `snippet_search` for specific claims

### Pattern 2 — Seed-Paper Expansion
1. `get_paper(DOI|arXiv|...)` → verify seed
2. `get_citations(paperId)` → forward expansion
3. Optionally `search_papers_by_relevance` with seed title terms for sideways discovery
4. Deduplicate by paperId before presenting

### Pattern 3 — Author Deep-Dive
1. `search_authors_by_name(name)` → pick correct profile (disambiguate by affiliation)
2. `get_author_papers(authorId)` → full publication list
3. Filter client-side by topic keywords or date

### Pattern 4 — Evidence Retrieval
1. `snippet_search(claim_query)` → find passages making/supporting a claim
2. For each hit, optionally `get_paper(id)` for full metadata

## Output & Interaction Rules

- Always report **total count** and **which tool was used**.
- Present top 10 as a table (title, year, venue, citations), then details for the most relevant.
- If the user writes in Chinese, present summaries in Chinese; keep titles in original language.
- After results, offer: **Details / Refine / Citations / Snippet / Export / Done**.

## Critical Rules

- **Prefer batched intent over ping-pong.** If the user's question needs two independent lookups, issue them as parallel MCP tool calls in one turn, not sequentially.
- **Never guess IDs.** If a user gives a fuzzy title, use `search_paper_by_title` before `get_paper`.
- **Respect rate limits.** An API key buys higher limits but not unlimited — stop expanding citation graphs beyond what the user asked for.
- **Do not fabricate fields.** If Asta returns null `abstract` or `venue`, say so rather than inventing.

## Handling Asta responses

| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Empty `abstract` | Not all corpus papers have full text — use `snippet_search`, or fall back to title + TLDR |
| Author disambiguation uncertain | Inspect affiliations in `search_authors_by_name` results before calling `get_author_papers` |
| `429 Too Many Requests` | Back off; batch with `get_paper_batch` instead of sequential `get_paper` calls |
| Need DOI / PubMed ID / arXiv ID | Add `externalIds` to `fields` (see "Retrieving DOI" above); fall back to `ArXiv` ID when `DOI` is absent |