Claude bioRxiv connectorWhat Claude can do in your bioRxiv account.
The Claude bioRxiv connector exposes 8 tools, all of them read tools. 0 write, 0 undocumented. Claude queries bioRxiv and medRxiv, the two preprint servers for biology and health research. What it finds, what it can't vouch for, and who can turn it off.
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Why it matters for keeping up with the literature
A preprint goes online before peer review, so that's where new results surface first. Instead of combing bioRxiv and medRxiv by hand, you ask Claude what's new on your topic; it queries both servers itself and sums up the papers in the chat. The connector is published by Anthropic.
A weekly literature scan in one question. Tracking CRISPR work? search_preprints filters by date range and subject, then get_preprint pulls the full abstract, funding, license and PDF link for the ones worth reading.
Find out what became of a preprint. Did that result from last month's seminar make it into a journal? search_published_articles pairs the preprint DOI with the published article's DOI, dates included.
Follow a funder's output. A program officer uses search_by_funder to list preprints tied to an organization, identified by its ROR ID, such as NIH or NSF.
What Claude doesn't do here: post, comment on or edit a preprint. By default the listing only exposes search and lookup. It can't vouch for quality either, since preprints haven't been peer reviewed. And nothing runs on its own; no alert fires when a paper appears. bioRxiv has no n8n, Make or Zapier page on our site; the Integrations page lists the ones we cover.
The vocabulary in one minute
Five terms that make the rest of the page easy to follow.
- Connector
- The link you set up once between Claude and a service, so Claude can draw on it while answering you.
- Tool
- A single named capability the connector gives Claude. Claude picks which to call on its own; the directory listing names them all.
- Authorization
- The service's screen where you grant Claude access, once per person, and where that access can be withdrawn the same way.
- Approval
- The confirmation Claude waits for in the chat before it goes ahead with anything that would change an account for you.
- MCP
- The shared standard connectors are built on, which is what lets an assistant talk to an outside service.
Add bioRxiv to Claude in three steps
- 01
Find bioRxiv in settings
In Claude, open Customize, then Connectors, and locate bioRxiv. On a Team or Enterprise workspace, an Owner or Primary Owner adds it for the team first, and members then connect it individually.
- 02
Click Connect
Start the link with Connect on bioRxiv's row and follow the window that opens. If the connection breaks later, Disconnect and add it again; that's the documented repair.
- 03
Approve with eyes open
If an authorization screen appears, it belongs to the service, and it is what sets the scope of the access. Read it before accepting; you can revoke that access later from the service itself.
The 8 tools of the Claude bioRxiv connector
bioRxiv gives Claude 8 tools: 8 that read your account, 0 that change something in it.
Eight tools, every one of them a read tool. Names stay exactly as Claude shows them.
- 8 read
What Claude reads (8)
8 toolsEight tools that query the two preprint servers and post nothing to them.
search_biorxiv_publications
A simplified way to track which bioRxiv preprints went on to a journal, scoped to bioRxiv alone and leaving medRxiv out.
search_by_funder
Surfaces work backed by a specific organization, named by its ROR ID, for instance NIH, NSF or the European Commission.
get_categories
Hands Claude bioRxiv's 27 subject categories, from animal behavior to systems biology, so a search lands in the right discipline.
get_preprint
Returns everything on file for one preprint: the full abstract, corresponding author contact, funding, license, PDF link and whether it has since appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.
search_published_articles
Follows preprints through to peer-reviewed publication, returning the original preprint DOI, the journal article DOI and the publication dates.
search_publisher_articles
Narrows published preprints to one journal or publisher, picked out by its DOI prefix, to show what each draws from the preprint pool.
search_preprints
The starting point for discovery: Claude looks for preprints by date range, subject or latest postings, and gets back DOIs, titles, authors, abstracts and categories.
get_content_statistics
Supplies platform-wide figures. Anthropic's tutorial describes it together with a sibling tool: submission volumes, cumulative growth, abstract and full-text views, PDF downloads.
What Claude asks before it acts
The default rule: Claude stops and asks for your OK before each action it would take on an account for you. Here, all eight tools only search and read.
On Team and Enterprise workspaces, owners decide whether members may let certain actions through without being asked again. They can also limit what a connector may do across the organization, keeping reads and closing writes, and nobody bypasses that from a personal account. Claude also works with the rights of whoever connected it and never more: what that person can't reach, Claude can't either.
Which plans it's available on
None of the 819 directory listings shows plan availability: that information isn't published anywhere, connector by connector.
Anthropic's general rule is public, though: remote connectors are open to all users on Claude, Cowork, Claude Desktop and mobile, and on Team or Enterprise an Owner or Primary Owner enables them before members can. For bioRxiv's real status, open its listing in the official directory, the only place kept up to date.
Where this connector stops
A connector isn't an automation. Claude calls these tools while it answers you; nothing goes out on its own when a preprint on your topic appears.
By default the listing exposes reads only, but that's an observed floor, not a guarantee: an admin can open actions that appear on no public listing. The directory badge isn't a security audit, and Anthropic states on every listing that it doesn't guarantee how exposed tools behave, even when it is the publisher itself. To compare with a connector that does write into an account, see the Claude activecampaign connector.
Need help connecting bioRxiv to Claude?
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