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Phở Research Tools MCP Server

by thaohienhomes Your server? Claim it
not responding

Phở Research Tools is listed as active in the registry but did not answer our last check. It exposes 9 tools. Last commit 2 Nov 2026.

Verifies AI-written references; finds real papers, evidence, datasets and research tools; PRISMA.

Uptime history 33 days of history · worst day 0%
33 days agonow
0.0%
Uptime 24h
0 of 91 checks
9
Tools
read from the server
45 ms
Response time
average over 24h
0
Stars
last commit 2 Nov 2026

What changed 8

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 25 October 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

25 Oct 4 tools appeared find_datasets, find_evidence, find_tools and 1 more
25 Oct 3 tool descriptions were rewritten check_retractions, prisma_flow_diagram, verify_references
25 Oct a tool changed the parameters it asks for prisma_flow_diagram

Phở Research Tools does not always answer

Over the last week it answered 0.0% of our checks. We check every 15 minutes, so you hear about the next outage within the hour — not from your users.

Three servers free · no card

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 11 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add pho-research-tools --transport http https://mcp.pho.chat/mcp
Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address
https://mcp.pho.chat/mcp
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.pho-research-tools]
url = "https://mcp.pho.chat/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pho-research-tools": {
      "url": "https://mcp.pho.chat/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "servers": {
    "pho-research-tools": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.pho.chat/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 9

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

datasets
find_datasets
Find open scientific datasets (and optionally models) that fit a research question, check their licences, verify the source papers (DOI, retractions, corrections), and return a citable Research Data Brief with a public share link. Searches DataCite (Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad and other data repositories), the Hugging Face Hub boosted by the Hugging Science curated index, and, for life-science questions, NCBI GEO, CZ CELLxGENE Discover (curated single-cell data) and the CZ CryoET Data Portal (cryo-electron tomography). Each result has a match level, a plain-language licence verdict, the source paper and whether it checks out, a citation for the data, and a line of code to load it. Every identifier comes from the repositories' own metadata; nothing is generated. The `why` field lists the facts behind the match: explain the fit to the user in your own words from those facts, and say plainly when the brief is empty. Pass `keywords` with English search words when the question is long or not in English. Licence verdicts come from repository metadata and are not legal advice.
evidence
find_evidence
Find the strongest published evidence for and against a scientific or medical claim. Searches PubMed (including a pass limited to guidelines, meta-analyses, systematic reviews and randomized trials) and OpenAlex, and returns real papers, each with a PMID or DOI, ordered by level of evidence: guideline, meta-analysis, systematic review, RCT, other trial, observational study, narrative review, case report, then study protocols that have not reported results yet. Each paper comes with the conclusion copied verbatim from its abstract, so you can judge for yourself whether it supports the claim, contradicts it, or does not address it, and quote the sentence you rely on. The tool does not judge stance and does not summarise: count a paper as support or contradiction only when its conclusion says so. Pass `query` with English search keywords when the claim is long or not in English. Retracted papers and correction notices are left out. Preprints are included and marked (not peer reviewed).
format
format_citations
Format references in a citation style (APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago author-date, Harvard, Vancouver, IEEE, AMA) or export them as BibTeX, RIS or CSL-JSON. By default every reference is first verified against Crossref, PubMed and OpenAlex, and verified references are formatted from the database record, so wrong years, pages or author names in the input are corrected. References that could not be verified are formatted exactly as written and flagged in `entries[].warnings`. Returns the bibliography and, for text and html output, the matching in-text citation for each reference.
papers
search_papers
Search PubMed and OpenAlex for real papers. Every result carries a DOI or PubMed ID that resolves, so nothing returned can be fabricated. Finds sources for a claim or a topic. Filters: publication year range, open-access only, study types, and the number of results. Retracted papers are left out by default. Preprints are included and marked `preprint: true` (not peer reviewed). Results are ranked by the databases' relevance, alternating between the two sources.
prisma
prisma_flow_diagram
Draw a PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for a new systematic review from the record counts, as a PNG image plus an SVG and download links. Give the counts you have; screened, sought, assessed and reports-included boxes that follow from others are filled in and marked as derived. Studies included is never derived. The tool checks that the numbers add up (records identified minus removed equals screened, and so on) and returns a warning naming each box that does not, with the value it should have. The diagram always shows the numbers exactly as given. Add `otherMethods` counts to draw the second column (websites, organisations, citation searching).
retractions
check_retractions
Check DOIs for retractions, expressions of concern and corrections, using Crossref (which includes Retraction Watch data). Status per DOI: retracted, concern, corrected, other_notice, no_notice (nothing on record), not_in_crossref, invalid_doi, rate_limited or lookup_failed (the DOI could not be checked, which is not a clean result). Works for a single paper or a whole reference list. verify_references already includes this check, so use this tool for DOIs that have not just been through verify_references. A DOI the same caller checked in the last hour is answered again at no cost to the allowance.
screening
screening_log
Turn the screening decisions of a systematic review into its PRISMA 2020 counts, flow diagram and screening log. Give one row per record: its title/abstract decision (include or exclude), its full-text decision for records that passed (include, exclude or not_retrieved), and the reason for each exclusion. Every box from "records screened" down is counted from the rows, so the diagram always matches the decisions; full-text exclusions are grouped by reason. Returns the diagram (PNG, SVG, links), the counts, a CSV of every decision for the review appendix, and the problems a reviewer would catch: full-text exclusions without a reason, records still waiting for a full-text decision, and duplicate ids. Add the identification counts (records from databases, duplicates removed) to complete the top of the diagram. At most 5000 records per call.
tools
find_tools
Find research software for a task from the bio.tools registry (ELIXIR), check each tool's licence, verify the paper behind it (DOI, retractions, corrections), label whether it is still maintained, and give the install line. Describe the task (e.g. "cluster single-cell RNA-seq data") and optionally the file format the data is in (e.g. H5AD, FASTQ, VCF); tools that list that format as an input are favoured. Each result has a match level, a plain-language licence verdict, the paper and whether it checks out, a maintenance label (active, idle, stale, archived) read from the linked GitHub repository, and an install line built from a PyPI, Bioconda, Bioconductor, CRAN or GitHub link the registry lists. Every identifier and command comes from the registry's own records; nothing is generated. The `why` field lists the facts behind the match: explain the fit in your own words from those facts, and say plainly when no tool matched. Pass `keywords` with English words when the task is long or not in English. Licence verdicts come from registry and repository metadata and are not legal advice.
verify
verify_references
Check every reference in a list against Crossref, PubMed and OpenAlex and report, for each one, whether the paper really exists and whether the details are right. Works on lists written by a person or generated by an AI model. Input: a pasted reference list in any common style (APA, Vancouver, numbered, mixed), BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON, or one DOI per line. Each reference gets exactly one status: verified, verified_with_corrections (real paper, some details wrong; corrected metadata included), likely_fabricated (no such paper exists), not_found (could not be confirmed either way), retracted, or ambiguous (several papers fit). likely_fabricated, not_found and ambiguous mean the reference could not be confirmed as a real paper; retracted means the paper exists but has been withdrawn. Retractions, expressions of concern and corrections are already checked here, so there is no need to call check_retractions on the same references afterwards. At most 50 references per call.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://mcp.pho.chat/mcp streamable-http answering 45 ms 11 min ago

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Phở Research Tools — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Phở Research Tools do?
It exposes 9 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: check_retractions, find_datasets, find_evidence, find_tools, format_citations, prisma_flow_diagram and 3 more. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is Phở Research Tools working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 0 of 91 checks got a reply (0.0%), average response time 45 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
The registry lists Phở Research Tools as active — why does it not respond?
The official MCP registry stores what the author submitted; it does not verify that the server still runs. We check the endpoint ourselves, and this one does not answer. Catalogues that copy the registry without checking will show it as working.
How do I connect Phở Research Tools?
Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does Phở Research Tools need an API key?
No. Phở Research Tools completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 9 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
Is Phở Research Tools open source?
The code is open source: it is published under the MIT licence, written in TypeScript, 0 stars on GitHub and 1 open issue. The licence covers the code in the repository, not the hosted service at mcp.pho.chat, which runs on its operator's own terms.