The NIH RePORTER MCP server enables conversational interaction with NIH's research database. It allows you to search for NIH-funded research projects and related publications through a natural language interface compatible with Model Context Protocol (MCP) clients like Claude Desktop or Cursor.
Clone the repository:
git clone <repository-url>
cd mcp-nih-reporter
Create and activate a virtual environment:
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate # On Windows, use `.venv\Scripts\activate`
Install dependencies using UV:
uv pip install -e .
The MCP server provides several tools for accessing the NIH RePORTER API:
search_projects
: Search for NIH-funded research projectssearch_publications
: Search for publications associated with NIH projectssearch_combined
: Combined search for both projects and publicationstest_connection
: Test the API connectionTo use this MCP server with Claude Desktop, add the following to your Claude Desktop configuration file:
{
"mcpServers": {
"nih-reporter": {
"command": "<fully qualified path to>/uv",
"args": [
"run",
"--with",
"mcp[cli]",
"mcp",
"run",
"<fully qualified path to>/mcp-nih-reporter/mcp-nih-reporter.py"
]
}
}
}
When you perform a search, results will be returned in a structured format containing:
If you encounter issues, check the log file (mcp-nih-reporter.log
) created in the root folder when the MCP server runs. This log contains detailed information about the server's operation and any errors that might occur.
To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:
claude mcp add-json "nih-reporter" '{"command":"uv","args":["run","--with","mcp[cli]","mcp","run","mcp-nih-reporter/mcp-nih-reporter.py"]}'
See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.
There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json
file so that it is available in all of your projects.
If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json
file.
To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".
When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json
file will be opened and you can add your server like this:
{
"mcpServers": {
"nih-reporter": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"run",
"--with",
"mcp[cli]",
"mcp",
"run",
"mcp-nih-reporter/mcp-nih-reporter.py"
]
}
}
}
To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json
file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.
Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.
The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.
You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.
To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:
1. Find your configuration file:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
2. Add this to your configuration file:
{
"mcpServers": {
"nih-reporter": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"run",
"--with",
"mcp[cli]",
"mcp",
"run",
"mcp-nih-reporter/mcp-nih-reporter.py"
]
}
}
}
3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect