| FMRS | 63 / 100 · C | 74 / 100 · B | 72 / 100 · B |
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| Reliability | 10 / 20 | 11 / 20 | 10 / 20 |
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| Security and permissions | 14 / 20 | 15 / 20 | 15 / 20 |
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| Maintenance | 10 / 20 | 17 / 20 | 16 / 20 |
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| Documentation | 15 / 20 | 17 / 20 | 17 / 20 |
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| Setup experience | 14 / 20 | 14 / 20 | 14 / 20 |
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| Best for | - Researchers, librarians, and academic writing assistants.
- Developers needing up-to-date scholarly metadata.
- Those building AI tools on top of a large academic knowledge base.
| - Developers needing quick, API-key-free web search capabilities
- Privacy-conscious users who prefer local search execution
- AI application development with Claude Desktop or Claude Code
| - Privacy-conscious developers who want local data storage.
- Researchers who need AI-assisted management of large note collections.
- Users of Markdown editors like Obsidian.
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| Not for | - Access to full-text PDFs—the server provides metadata only.
- Users seeking everyday non-academic search.
- Applications requiring extremely low latency for massive concurrent requests without rate limit handling.
| - Enterprise applications requiring high-scale, reliable search APIs
- Users needing advanced search features like custom ranking or filters
- Accessing sites blocked by TLS fingerprinting without installing the optional browser backend
| - Users needing cloud sync and mobile access (unless using the paid cloud service).
- Minimalists who want zero configuration.
- Scenarios requiring large-scale vector databases and complex retrieval (local SQLite may be insufficient).
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| Required permissions | - Requires access to the OpenAlex API, either anonymous or with an API key.
- For HTTP transport, needs to open a port locally or configure a public endpoint.
- May read or parse input data containing names or identifiers.
| - Outbound network access to DuckDuckGo and other websites
- Reads environment variables for SafeSearch, region, and CA certificates
- Optionally reads a CA certificate file (for TLS-intercepting proxies)
| - Read and write to the local filesystem (default: ~/basic-memory).
- Perform file and directory operations (create, edit, delete).
- Access local SQLite database (or Postgres/Milvus if configured).
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| Risks and side effects | - API rate limits may be more restrictive with anonymous access; without a mailto identifier, requests may be throttled.
- OpenAlex data is updated regularly but may not be real-time, and some records may be missing.
- If exposed over the internet, the server could be a target for abuse; protect the endpoint if public.
- Tools returning large data sets may cause high network traffic and memory usage.
| - Search endpoints may occasionally return empty results or errors, especially when blocked
- Content fetching may be subject to SSRF protection, blocking private or loopback addresses by default
- Misuse could lead to rate limiting or IP blocking
| - Tools have write operations that may unintentionally modify or delete notes.
- Edit operations may overwrite existing content, though there are protections.
- Semantic search and reranking features may require model downloads, adding latency.
- Local data backups are the user's responsibility.
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| Supported clients | Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code | Claude Desktop, Claude Code | Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT, Obsidian |
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| Tools | 5 | 2 | 21 |
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