Connector
FastTrack Connector
An MCP server you paste into Claude once. It gives Claude seven research tools and a live view of the published record across every discipline and publisher, paywalled and open access alike.
Give Claude Real Eyes On The Literature.
Two free things I built and use myself. A connector that plugs Claude into 250 million papers and runs the checks reviewers will run on you, and a Skill that pressure-tests your topic before you commit a year to it.
Skill
Topic Validator
A downloadable Skill holding the topic-validation procedure I use with my own researchers. It walks you through it phase by phase, and tells you plainly when there is no real topic there yet.
Seven ways research goes wrong, and what runs instead.
One tool for each. This is the whole connector.
Your AI invents a citation that was never published.
Answers come from OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar, roughly 250 million records. Every result carries a real link.
/search_papersYou spend eight months on a study someone already published.
Finds the papers closest to your question, then tests what you can add over and above them. The check an editor runs.
/run_duplication_testYou pick a gap that is already closing.
Plots the per-year publication curve on your candidate gap. A steep rise is a warning, not a green light.
/check_gap_saturationYou submit to a journal that quietly charges you.
Output volume, citation impact, open access status and DOAJ listing, so you can route around sham journals.
/get_journal_profileYou cannot tell whether a debate is live or long settled.
Returns the recent clusters on your topic plus the shared reference core beneath them, found by co-citation.
/map_topic_debateYou have three good papers and no idea what sits next to them.
Hand it what you have already read and it expands the nearest-neighbour set around those, not around a keyword.
/recommend_similarA famous paper's citation count says nothing about whether it still matters.
Fetch any paper by DOI for its influential citation count and its year-by-year trajectory.
/get_paperTwo minutes, and it is yours.
Fill in the two fields below and I will show you exactly how to install the connector and the Skill. Both are free. I use your email only to tell you when the tools change.
Install the connector
This is the screen you are looking for, under Customize in the Claude sidebar.
- Open claude.ai, then Customize, then Connectors.
- Click Add at the top right (some versions show a +), then Add custom connector.
- Name it FastTrack Connector.
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Paste this as the URL, then click Add.
https://literature.researchfasttrack.com/mcp - Set the tools to always allow so Claude stops asking before every search.
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Test it:
Search the literature for the impact of physical activity on depression using the FastTrack connector.After this you can just say "search the literature".
Install the Skill
Download the zip, then in Claude go to Customize, then Skills, and upload it. No need to unzip. To use it later, type / in any chat and pick it.
Download the Skill (ZIP)When the free tools are not enough.
The Research Collective is where I run the deeper search engine, the full course material, and 200+ researchers across 50 countries working through the same method.
