Claude Elicit connectorWhat Claude can do in your Elicit account.
The Claude Elicit connector exposes 5 tools. 3 read, searching papers and clinical trials or fetching a report, 1 writes by launching a new literature review report, and 1 is documented nowhere. Below: what Claude searches, what it creates in your account, and what stays out of reach.
Verified Trustpilot reviews · AI, automation & growth agency
What changes when Claude can query Elicit for you
Elicit is a research assistant built on a corpus of more than 125 million academic papers, aimed at life sciences R&D. With the connector, you stop switching tabs: you ask a research question in the chat, and Claude searches the literature or the trial registry, then reports back with the sources attached.
A quick scan of the evidence. Before a project meeting, you ask what recent studies say about a compound; Claude calls search_papers and returns titles, authors, years, abstracts, DOIs and citation counts.
A look at what is running in the clinic. With search_trials, Claude checks ClinicalTrials.gov for trials on the same question, so the published papers and the ongoing studies sit side by side.
A structured report you can share. create_report launches a literature review report in your Elicit account; it is asynchronous, and Elicit says a report takes 5 to 15 minutes. Claude then uses get_report to read its status, summary and full text with citations.
What Claude does not do here: it does not run anything on its own once the chat ends, and the directory sheet does not list the systematic review tools that Elicit's README describes. One listed tool, list_reports, has no description anywhere. Scheduled literature watches belong to automation tools, a different job, reachable from the Integrations hub.
Five words before you connect
The terms Claude uses around this connector, explained briefly.
- Connector
- A link set up once between Claude and an account you already have, so Claude can work with that account while it answers you.
- Tool
- A single named action the connector opens to Claude. Claude chooses which ones to call as it answers; the directory lists them by name.
- Authorization
- The service's own sign-in page, where you grant Claude the access it will use. Given once per person, and it can be revoked later.
- Approval
- The confirmation Claude waits for before it changes something in an account, displayed in the conversation at the right moment.
- MCP
- The common standard connectors are built on, which is what lets an assistant like Claude talk to an outside service such as Elicit.
Connect Elicit to Claude in three steps
- 01
Locate Elicit in Claude
Open Claude's settings, choose Customize, then Connectors, and find Elicit in the list. In a Team or Enterprise workspace, an Owner or Primary Owner has to enable it before each member can sign in for themselves.
- 02
Launch the connection
Select Connect on Elicit's row, then sign in to Elicit in the browser window Elicit opens. That page is Elicit's, not Claude's. If the link stops working, Disconnect and connect again.
- 03
Review the access you grant
Read Elicit's authorization screen before you confirm. The service decides what the access covers, not Claude. You can revoke it afterwards from your Elicit account.
The 5 tools, by what they do
Elicit gives Claude 5 tools: 3 that read your account, 1 that change something in it, and 1 no official source describes.
Three that read, one that creates, one with no description. Names stay exactly as Claude shows them.
- 3 read
- 1 write
- 1 not documented
What Claude reads (3)
3 toolsThree tools that search or retrieve without changing anything in your account.
search_papers
Runs a semantic search over Elicit's corpus of academic papers and hands Claude a list with titles, authors, publication years, abstracts, DOIs and citation counts, ready to summarise or compare.
search_trials
Looks up clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, so Claude can tell you which registered studies exist on a given condition or drug.
get_report
Fetches a report's status, its summary and its content, which lets Claude check progress on a running review and, once finished, read the full text with citations and download links in PDF or DOCX.
What Claude creates (1)
1 toolOne tool adds a report to your Elicit account. No source describes its confirmation, so the general rule below applies.
create_report
Approval: see the ruleStarts an AI literature review report in your Elicit account from a research question. The job runs in the background and returns at once with a session reference, while the report itself takes 5 to 15 minutes.
Undocumented (1)
1 toolThe directory lists this name and nothing else. Elicit's README does not mention it, so this page does not describe it.
list_reports
This name appears on the directory sheet and nowhere else: Elicit's README lists other tools and no Claude page covers it, so nothing here says what it does.
What Claude checks with you first
By default, Claude stops and asks before each action it performs on an account for someone, with the prompt shown in the conversation.
No source says whether create_report triggers its own confirmation, so the default rule is what covers it. Elicit's README notes you can optionally configure tool permissions when you add the connector. On Team and Enterprise workspaces, owners decide whether members may let certain actions run without a prompt, and they can restrict a connector for the whole organization, for example keeping search on and creation off. Claude acts with the rights of the signed-in person, never more.
Which plans include it
The official directory has 819 sheets and none of them shows plan availability. For this connector, as for every other, that answer is not published.
The published rule is general: remote connectors are open to all users on Claude, Cowork, Claude Desktop and mobile. On Team and Enterprise, an Owner or Primary Owner opens a connector for the organization before members can connect. To see Elicit's current status, open its sheet in the official directory, which is the only place that keeps it up to date.
Where this connector stops
A connector is not an automation. Claude calls Elicit's tools while it answers, so no new paper or trial pings you on its own.
What is known comes only from Elicit's README and the directory sheet; neither the Claude help center nor Anthropic's developer docs cover this connector. The tool list is an observed floor rather than a promise, since an administrator can open actions no public sheet shows. The partner badge is not a security audit, and Anthropic says on every sheet that it does not choose a publisher's tools or vouch for their behaviour.
Need help connecting Elicit to Claude?
A person reads every message.
