doiget
A single-binary CLI + stdio MCP server that turns DOIs and arXiv ids into local PDFs through official, OA-first APIs.
Docs: stable = the Zola site (built from main); dev = rustdoc built from next; API = docs.rs (latest published release).
Status: Shipping on crates.io (doiget-core, doiget-cli,
doiget-mcp), with sigstore-signed binaries + an SBOM attached to the GitHub
Release. Tier 1 + Tier 2 sources, the stdio MCP server, citation-graph
expansion, and gated TDM sources are all implemented. Releases are cut by a
single signed git tag through the tag-driven pipeline (see
ADR-0025); release-plz was
retired. See CHANGELOG.md for history and
docs/PHASES.md for the phase plan.
Posture
doiget is a general-purpose automation tool for retrieving papers via official publisher APIs. By design, doiget only attempts retrieval through:
- Public Open Access sources (default — Crossref, Unpaywall, arXiv).
- Credentials the user has personally configured for their own institutional or personal subscriptions (opt-in, compile-time gated).
doiget does not work around any access control mechanism, redistribute papers, host content, operate as a SaaS, or bundle any publisher API keys.
Users are responsible for ensuring they have the right to access the content they request and for compliance with each source's Terms of Service.
See docs/LEGAL.md and docs/SCOPE.md.
Documentation
Architecture: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md Threat model: docs/SECURITY.md Permanent non-goals: docs/SCOPE.md Phase plan: docs/PHASES.md ADRs: docs/DECISIONS/
Installation
doiget ships a single self-contained binary — the Linux build is fully static (musl), so it runs on old glibc / HPC boxes too. Every channel installs the same checksum-verified binary from the signed GitHub Release.
Recommended: use a prebuilt binary (no Rust toolchain, no compiler). The shell / PowerShell installers below download the signed release binary directly.
cargo install(further down) instead compiles from source and therefore needs a working C/C++ build toolchain — see that section for the per-platform requirements.
Shell installer (Linux / macOS)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QAtlasHub/doiget/main/scripts/install.sh | sh
Installs to ~/.local/bin (override with DOIGET_INSTALL_DIR); pin a version with
DOIGET_VERSION=0.6.0. The script verifies the published SHA-256 sidecar before installing.
PowerShell installer (Windows)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QAtlasHub/doiget/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex
Upgrading. Re-run the installer. It says which version it replaced and
leaves a doiget.install.json beside the binary. doiget never checks for
updates by itself (ADR-0015). To see which binary is actually running,
including the one an MCP config names by path, use doiget capabilities
(build) or the doiget_health tool. Both report the version, the channel,
the install method and that method's update command. doiget version --check
compares with the latest release when you ask. A Claude Desktop .mcpb
extension is never updated automatically; install the new .mcpb from the
latest release.
From crates.io (Rust toolchain — compiles from source)
The published crate is doiget-cli (it produces the doiget binary).
cargo install doiget does not work — there is no crate by that bare name:
cargo install doiget-cli # installs the `doiget` binary
Because this compiles from source, you need a C/C++ build toolchain (a
linker is mandatory — cargo install cannot link a binary without one):
- Linux:
gcc/clang+make(e.g.build-essential). - macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (
xcode-select --install). - Windows: either the Visual Studio Build Tools with the "Desktop
development with C++" workload (provides
link.exe), or a MinGW-w64 toolchain used via the GNU target (rustup toolchain install stable-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu+cargo +stable-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu install doiget-cli).
If you don't have (or don't want) a build toolchain, use one of the prebuilt installers above — they need no compiler.
npm / npx — one line in an agent config
npx -y doiget-cli serve # MCP server, no install step
npm install -g doiget-cli # or put `doiget` on PATH
The package is doiget-cli and the command it installs is doiget — the same
shape as cargo install doiget-cli, which is where the name comes from. npm
refuses the unscoped name doiget as too similar to the unrelated giget, and
matching the crate turned out to be the better answer regardless: one name for
the tool on both registries.
The npm packages carry the same signed release binaries as optionalDependencies
— npm resolves the one matching your platform, and there is no postinstall
download, so this works under --ignore-scripts and through a corporate
registry mirror. npm view doiget version tells you what is published; the
packages ship from tagged releases, so a very new commit may be ahead of them.
Homebrew
brew tap QAtlasHub/doiget https://github.com/QAtlasHub/doiget
brew install doiget
The tap lives in this repository rather than a separate homebrew-doiget, which
is why the tap line carries an explicit URL. A dedicated tap repo would shorten
it to brew tap QAtlasHub/doiget; the formula would move across unchanged.
Formula/doiget.rb installs the same signed release binary the GitHub
Release publishes, pinned by the sha256 from that release's own .sha256
asset — the file the shell installer verifies against, so the two channels
cannot disagree about what they installed. It is generated by
scripts/update-homebrew-formula.sh, never hand-edited, and CI fails if the
committed formula is not what the generator produces.
The formula tracks the latest stable release, so it can trail a very new
tag by one commit; brew info doiget shows which version it pins.
Claude Code plugin
/plugin marketplace add QAtlasHub/doiget
/plugin install doiget@doiget
Reads .claude-plugin/ from this repository's default branch. The plugin's
.mcp.json runs npx -y doiget-cli serve, so it needs nothing installed
beforehand — npm fetches the wrapper and the one matching platform binary on
first run. Until this it ran a bare doiget, which meant the plugin worked
only for people who had already installed doiget some other way; that is why it
was self-hosted rather than submitted to the Anthropic plugin directory, and
why it is now submittable.
Channel status
Docker was ranked second in #501 on the grounds that a container is "the only
architecture the Tier-3 features can legally be used in". That premise does not
hold: ADR-0002 decides that the default published binary contains no TDM
source code at all, and an image built from the published binary would ship
oa-only,citation like every other prebuilt channel. The architecture the
sentence describes is real, and it is served by building from source with
--features tdm-<publisher>, which is not a distribution channel. What remains
is "a shape enterprises can pin and scan" — worth something, but doiget is a
single statically-linked binary, so a container solves no dependency problem
here and the existing .sha256 plus cosign bundle already give a pinnable,
verifiable artefact.
npm was the one channel whose pipeline was written and whose packages did not
exist. npm Trusted Publishing cannot perform a package's first publish — the
setting lives under a package's Settings, and there is no Settings page for a
package that has never been published — so the release job, which carries no
token by design, cannot create them. scripts/bootstrap-npm.sh does the
once-only placeholder publish that unblocks it; CONTRIBUTING.md has the
runbook.
As of 2026-08-27 the four per-platform packages are published as 0.0.0
placeholders. npm points latest at a package's first publish whatever
--tag says, so those placeholders are deprecated — that notice is the only
warning until a release moves latest to a real version.
#247 was closed as completed
while four of its five channels did not exist; the remaining ones are tracked in
#501. Every release asset is
cosign-keyless signed (<asset>.cosign.bundle) for optional verification.
Quick start
# Fetch a paper by DOI (Open Access only by default)
doiget fetch 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.200601
# Fetch by arXiv id
doiget fetch arXiv:2401.12345
# Batch fetch
doiget batch refs.txt
# Verify a bibliography's references resolve (no PDF download) — CI gate
doiget verify docs/references.bib --strict
# Lint a .bib for structural issues (no network): missing fields,
# blank fields, $$-display-math titles. Read-only and math-aware.
doiget lint docs/references.bib
# Inspect what was fetched
doiget info 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.200601
# Run as MCP server (stdio)
doiget serve
Default features fetch only Open Access PDFs through Crossref / Unpaywall / arXiv. Institutional TDM access (Springer OA, APS Harvest, Elsevier ScienceDirect TDM) is not in the default published binary; it must be opted in at build time per publisher. See docs/SOURCES.md.
Stores written by BiblioFetch.jl
doiget's store format (TOML metadata + PDF files under a configurable store root,
docs/STORE.md) began as a format shared with BiblioFetch.jl. That
contract is retired (ADR-0060), and the format did not change: point doiget at an
existing store (DOIGET_STORE_ROOT=~/papers) and it reads it, preserving the
[bibliofetch] table it does not own. doiget defaults to ./papers (ADR-0036).
License
MIT for the doiget source code and binaries (see LICENSE).
The license under which doiget retrieves papers is separate and is determined by each paper's own license, the publisher's API Terms of Service, and the user's own access rights. doiget does not relicense fetched content.
Contact
Takedown requests, security disclosures, and other formal correspondence: CONTACT.md.