Alpha Hub: Context Hub for research papers

CLI + MCP server for searching papers and building persistent knowledge.
Powered by alphaXiv for semantic search, paper reports, and PDF Q&A.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

README.md

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+# Alpha Hub
+
+Research agents hallucinate paper details and forget what they learn in a session. Alpha Hub gives them semantic paper search, AI-generated reports, and persistent annotations — so they get smarter with every task. Search and content powered by [alphaXiv](https://alphaxiv.org).
+
+[![MIT License](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg)](LICENSE)
+[![Node.js](https://img.shields.io/badge/node-%3E%3D18-brightgreen)](https://nodejs.org)
+
+## Quick Start
+
+```bash
+npm install -g @alpha-hub/cli
+alpha login                        # sign in with alphaXiv
+alpha search "attention mechanism" # search papers
+alpha get 1706.03762               # fetch paper report
+```
+
+## How It Works
+
+Alpha is designed for your coding agent to use (not for you to use!). You can prompt your agent to use it (e.g., "Use the CLI command `alpha` to search for papers on LoRA. Run `alpha` to see how it works.")
+
+**Most of the time, it's simple — search, read, use:**
+
+```bash
+alpha search "transformer attention"     # find relevant papers
+alpha get 1706.03762                     # fetch AI-generated paper report
+# Agent reads the report, understands the paper. Done.
+```
+
+**When the agent discovers something useful**, it can annotate locally for next time:
+
+```bash
+alpha annotate 1706.03762 "Superseded by Flash Attention for efficiency"
+
+# Next session, the annotation appears automatically on alpha get.
+```
+
+**Need to go deeper?** Ask questions about any paper:
+
+```bash
+alpha ask 1706.03762 "What datasets were used for evaluation?"
+```
+
+## Commands
+
+| Command | Purpose |
+|---------|---------|
+| `alpha search <query>` | Search papers (semantic, keyword, or agentic) |
+| `alpha get <id\|url>` | Fetch paper report + local annotation |
+| `alpha ask <id\|url> <question>` | Ask a question about a paper |
+| `alpha annotate <id> <note>` | Attach a note to a paper |
+| `alpha annotate <id> --clear` | Remove a note |
+| `alpha annotate --list` | List all notes |
+| `alpha login` | Sign in with alphaXiv |
+| `alpha logout` | Sign out |
+
+All commands accept `--json` for machine-readable output.
+
+## Self-Improving Agents
+
+Alpha Hub is designed for a loop where agents get better over time.
+
+**Annotations** are local notes that agents attach to papers. They persist across sessions and appear automatically on future fetches — so agents learn from past experience.
+
+```
+  Without Alpha Hub                          With Alpha Hub
+  ─────────────────                          ──────────────
+  Search the web for papers                  Semantic search via alphaXiv
+  Read raw PDFs                              AI-generated paper reports
+  Miss context and gotchas                   Agent notes what it learns
+  Knowledge forgotten                        ↗ Even smarter next session
+  ↻ Repeat next session
+```
+
+## Key Features
+
+### Semantic Search
+
+Three search modes — semantic (embedding similarity), keyword (exact terms), and agentic (multi-turn retrieval) — so agents find the right papers regardless of how they phrase the query.
+
+```bash
+alpha search "methods for reducing hallucination in LLMs"  # semantic
+alpha search "LoRA" --mode keyword                          # keyword
+```
+
+### Paper Q&A
+
+Ask questions about any paper without reading the full PDF. The answer is grounded in the paper's actual content.
+
+```bash
+alpha ask 2106.09685 "What is the rank used for the low-rank matrices?"
+```
+
+### Annotations
+
+Local notes that agents attach to papers — they persist across sessions and appear automatically on future fetches. See the annotation as a gap the agent discovered and recorded so it doesn't repeat the same mistake.
+
+## License
+
+[MIT](LICENSE)