# Consensus > Developer documentation for Consensus, the AI research engine. - [Start here](https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/what-is-consensus.md): A short, video-first guide to Consensus for researchers at any level. Learn to search, read, and organise the literature on your topic, one lesson at a time. - [Run your first search](https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/run-your-first-search.md): Type a research question, pick what to search, and read what comes back. Keyword searches and full questions both work. - [Where the papers come from](https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/where-papers-come-from.md): Consensus has the second-largest research index in the world: abstracts and metadata for 400 million scholarly articles, including 350 million peer-reviewed research papers, open-access full text, and paywalled full text through publisher partnerships, updated weekly. - [Read the full paper](https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/full-text-access.md): Consensus reads the whole paper, not just the abstract, including paywalled articles from major publishers, open-access PDFs, and papers you upload yourself. - [Go deeper with Deep Review](https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/deep-review.md): A Deep Review runs many searches, reads 50 to 100 papers, and writes a longer report. Use it when one search isn't enough to answer your question. - [Save papers to your Library](https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/save-papers-to-your-library.md): Bookmark papers and searches as you go, and keep them in a Collection for your project so nothing gets lost. - [Use Consensus in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or with the API](https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/mcp.md): Connect Consensus to ChatGPT, Claude, or Microsoft 365 Copilot in one click, or build on it with the API, so answers cite real peer-reviewed papers. - [Read a thread](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/read-a-consensus-answer.md): What every part of a search result means: the search trace, the written answer, the citations, and the reference list with its study types and citation counts. - [Check a claim](https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/citation-grounding.md): Citation Grounding shows the exact quote behind every citation in a Consensus answer. Hover to see the passage, click to jump to it in the paper. - [Ask a paper](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/ask-questions-about-a-paper.md): Attach a paper to the search bar and ask about its methods, sample, findings, and limitations, so you understand a study before you cite it. - [Filter for recent studies](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/find-high-quality-recent-papers.md): Cut through preprints and low-impact work. Stack year, journal quality, and citation filters in plain language, then visualize the results on a research timeline. - [Find popular papers](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/find-seminal-papers.md): New to a field? Surface the foundational papers, deep-read the most cited one, and map its citation graph in three searches. - [Research terms dictionary](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/research-terms.md): A short glossary of the research words you'll see in Consensus and in papers, from corpus and preprint to meta-analysis and effect size. - [See how the field got here](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/map-field-history.md): Get the historical arc of a field, not just a list of papers. Early foundations, key breakthroughs, and what changed in the last three years. - [Spot the main findings and themes](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/spot-main-findings.md): Group the research on your topic into themes, rank them by how strong the evidence is, and put the main findings into your own words. - [Compare studies side by side](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/build-a-comparison-table.md): Compare interventions side by side with the same metrics. Run parallel searches, then extract sample size, session count, follow-up duration, and effect size into one table. - [Find where studies disagree](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/where-studies-disagree.md): Find the questions your field hasn't settled, understand why studies reach different results, and spot the limitations that matter. - [Follow a paper's citations](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/trace-citations.md): Understand where a paper came from and how the field built on it. Bi-directional citation tracing using Attention Is All You Need as the anchor. - [Grow a reading list from a paper](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/snowball-reading-list.md): Start from one paper you trust and triangulate similarity, citations, and references to find every adjacent study, then map the gaps. - [Explore the citation graph](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/explore-the-citation-graph.md): See how papers connect through citations on a visual map. Start from a paper you trust and find the work it built on and the work that followed. - [Look up a researcher's work](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/research-an-author.md): Map a researcher's publications, find their most influential paper, and trace its downstream impact. Useful before a meeting, a hire, or a citation. - [Build Collections for your project](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/build-collections.md): Organise your project's papers into Collections by theme, add papers from anywhere, ask questions of everything you've saved, and share it with collaborators. - [Find research gaps](https://docs.consensus.app/learn/find-research-gaps.md): Ask Consensus what's missing from the papers you've saved, such as populations, study types, or topics, then search the full index for papers that fill those gaps. - [Add your own PDFs](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/private-documents.md): Upload internal reports, proprietary data, or unpublished documents into a Collection and search them alongside 400M+ scholarly articles, privately. - [Connect two fields](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/bridge-two-fields.md): Bridge two disciplines in one thread: establish the limits in your field, find where they show up in another, map the gaps, and find collaborators. - [Check a manuscript's citations](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/manuscript-citation-check.md): Upload your manuscript and use a Deep Review to find supporting and challenging studies, surface papers you missed, and do a final gut check before submitting. - [Review a grant before you submit](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/grant-review.md): Upload your grant and use a Deep Review to find similar studies, compare designs, identify literature gaps, and validate your effect size and sample size assumptions. - [Catch up on a fast-moving field](https://docs.consensus.app/search-basics/catch-up-on-a-field.md): Fifty new papers a week and no time to read them. Build a what's-new-and-what's-strongest digest grouped by approach, then drill into the winning papers. - [Paper search](https://docs.consensus.app/get-started/how-search-works.md): Consensus finds the most relevant papers with hybrid keyword and semantic search, ranks them the way a researcher would weigh them, refines the top 20 with a larger model, and only then uses AI to synthesize an answer. - [Research Agent](https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/research-agent.md): Research Agent is the AI research assistant behind every Pro message and Deep Review in Consensus. It plans searches, chains tools, applies academic filters, and returns citation-backed answers. - [Deep Review](https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/deep-search.md): Deep is a longer, more robust version of a Consensus search. It runs up to 20 searches in parallel, uses multiple Research Agent tools like citation crawl, and reads 50 to 100 papers before answering. - [Library](https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/library.md): My Library is where you save, organize, and work with research in Consensus. Store papers, searches, and uploaded documents in Collections, import from Zotero, and chat with everything you've collected. - [Citation Graph](https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/citation-graph.md): Citation Graph is a visual way to explore how papers connect. Start with up to 5 seed papers you trust and discover related work through citation relationships instead of keywords. - [Skills](https://docs.consensus.app/core-features/skills.md): Skills are ready-made research workflows built into the Consensus search bar. Pick one, such as Literature Review or Verify Citations, and Consensus runs the whole task for you as a Deep Review. - [Get started with Consensus API](https://docs.consensus.app/api-get-started.md): Search over 400 million scholarly articles, including 350 million peer-reviewed research papers, with the Consensus REST API. - [Full text in the API](https://docs.consensus.app/api-full-text.md): How the Consensus API uses full text to find papers, and how to get the passages inside each paper that answer your query. - [API plans and access](https://docs.consensus.app/api-plans-and-access.md): What each Consensus plan includes on the API: monthly calls, papers per request, pagination, full-text excerpts, and rate limits. - [What you can build with the Consensus API](https://docs.consensus.app/api-use-cases.md) - [Quick start: Search](https://docs.consensus.app/api-quickstart-search.md): Find ranked papers for a query in one request, and see when search is the right Consensus API endpoint. - [Search](https://docs.consensus.app/api-reference/search.md): The supported endpoint for searching academic papers. Use this instead of the legacy `/v1/quick_search` endpoint, which is deprecated and will be removed on 2027-02-07. - [Quick search](https://docs.consensus.app/api-reference/quick-search.md): This endpoint is deprecated. Use `GET /v1/search` instead. It will be removed on 2027-02-07. - [Quick start: Threads](https://docs.consensus.app/api-quickstart-threads.md): Delegate a research question to the Consensus research agent and get back a cited answer, using the Threads endpoints of the Consensus API. - [Start a Thread](https://docs.consensus.app/api-reference/start-a-thread.md): Delegate a research task to the Consensus research agent and get a `thread_id` back immediately. Rate limit: 1 request/second. The run is asynchronous: poll `GET /v1/threads/{thread_id}` until status is `idle`. A 5xx means the request may or may not have taken effect: there is no idempotency key yet… - [Poll a Thread](https://docs.consensus.app/api-reference/poll-a-thread.md): The polling half of create-then-poll. While status is `running`, wait ~30 seconds between polls; faster polling is rate-limited (hard cap 3/s). Readable for any Thread the key can access, including ones shared with the caller, not only Threads it created. Only the target interaction (`interaction_id… - [Add a follow-up](https://docs.consensus.app/api-reference/add-a-follow-up.md): Continue the research conversation with full context of the earlier turns. Rate limit: 1 request/second. Refused with 409 while the Thread's latest interaction is still running, so wait until status is `idle` or `failed` first. Returns a new `interaction_id` immediately; poll `GET /v1/threads/{threa… - [List historical Threads](https://docs.consensus.app/api-reference/list-historical-threads.md): The caller's prior Threads, newest first, optionally filtered by a case-insensitive title substring. Rate limit: 1 request/second. On this list, status may be absent for Threads inactive past the status window and title is substituted when the Thread has none; GET the Thread for authoritative status… - [Get started with Consensus MCP](https://docs.consensus.app/consensus-mcp.md): The Consensus MCP server enables AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini Spark, and other MCP-compatible clients to search over 400 million scholarly articles, including 350 million peer-reviewed research papers, directly from the conversation. - [MCP plans and access](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-plans-and-access.md): What each Consensus plan includes on the MCP server: papers per search, monthly calls, rate limits, result fields, and API key access. - [What you can build with the Consensus MCP](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-use-cases.md) - [Quick start: Search & Threads](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-tools/quickstart.md): The two ways an assistant uses Consensus MCP: search for ranked papers in one call, or hand a research question to the Consensus research agent with Threads. - [search](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-tools/search.md): The Consensus MCP search tool: find ranked, peer-reviewed papers for a query in one call, with academic filters. - [create_thread](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-tools/create-thread.md): The Consensus MCP create_thread tool: start a Thread that hands a research question to the Consensus research agent. - [get_thread](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-tools/get-thread.md): The Consensus MCP get_thread tool: poll a Thread and read the research agent's cited answer when it's ready. - [add_to_thread](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-tools/add-to-thread.md): The Consensus MCP add_to_thread tool: ask a follow-up in an existing Thread, keeping the earlier context. - [find_threads](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-tools/find-threads.md): The Consensus MCP find_threads tool: list your Threads and find an earlier one by title. - [Connect Claude Desktop](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/claude-desktop.md): Add Consensus to Claude on the web or in the Claude desktop app. - [Connect Claude Code](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/claude-code.md): Add the Consensus MCP server to Claude Code with one command. - [Connect ChatGPT](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/chatgpt.md): Connect the Consensus app in ChatGPT. - [Connect Codex](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/codex.md): Add the Consensus MCP server to OpenAI Codex. - [Connect Cursor](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/cursor.md): Install the Consensus MCP server in Cursor. - [Connect VS Code (GitHub Copilot)](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/vs-code-github-copilot.md): Add the Consensus MCP server to VS Code with GitHub Copilot. - [Connect Windsurf](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/windsurf.md): Add the Consensus MCP server to Windsurf. - [Connect Gemini Spark](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/gemini-spark.md): Add Consensus as a custom app for Gemini Spark. - [Connect Perplexity](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/perplexity.md): Add Consensus from the Perplexity Computer connectors store. - [Connect Microsoft 365 Copilot](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/microsoft-365-copilot.md): Connect Consensus in Microsoft 365 Copilot once your admin has added it. - [Connect Microsoft 365 Copilot Studio](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/microsoft-365-copilot-studio.md): Add Consensus as a custom MCP tool in Microsoft Copilot Studio. - [Connect other MCP clients](https://docs.consensus.app/mcp-clients/other-mcp-clients.md): Connect any MCP client that supports remote servers. - [Consensus for enterprise](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/overview.md): Consensus is used by some of the largest research organizations in the world through the MCP server and the API. Pick the deployment shape that fits your organization, then follow the guide for your platform. - [Connection reference](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/connection-reference.md): The technical facts every integration needs: the MCP endpoint, transport behavior, both authentication options, OAuth discovery documents, and the domains to allowlist. - [Security and data handling](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/security.md): Consensus is SOC 2 Type II compliant and hosted on Google Cloud. What leaves your network when someone searches, what comes back, what Consensus stores, and the controls behind it. The questions IT and security teams ask before approving a connector. - [Microsoft 365 Copilot](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/microsoft-365-copilot.md): For Microsoft 365 admins at universities and research institutions: approve Consensus for your tenant so it appears under Sources in Copilot Chat, without opening the app store to everyone. - [Microsoft Copilot Studio](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/copilot-studio.md): Add the Consensus MCP server as a Model Context Protocol tool in Copilot Studio, with per-user OAuth or a shared API key, so your own agents can search 400 million papers. - [AI gateways and MCP registries](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/overview.md): Register the Consensus MCP server in the gateway your organization already runs. The same five facts work everywhere; product pages give the exact field names. - [TrueFoundry AI Gateway](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/truefoundry.md): Register the Consensus MCP server in TrueFoundry's MCP Gateway with a shared API key or per-user OAuth. - [LiteLLM MCP Gateway](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/litellm.md): Add the Consensus MCP server to LiteLLM's config.yaml with a bearer token or per-user OAuth with Dynamic Client Registration. - [Cloudflare MCP Server Portals](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/cloudflare.md): Add the Consensus MCP server to a Cloudflare One MCP Portal so users reach it through one Access-protected URL. - [IBM ContextForge MCP Gateway](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/ibm-contextforge.md): Register the Consensus MCP server in IBM's open-source ContextForge gateway with a bearer token or per-user OAuth. - [Azure API Management](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/azure-api-management.md): Expose the Consensus MCP server through Azure API Management as a passthrough MCP server, with a bearer token injected by policy. - [AWS Bedrock AgentCore Gateway](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/aws-agentcore.md): Add the Consensus MCP server as an MCP target in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Gateway with an API key credential provider. - [Portkey MCP Gateway](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/portkey.md): Register the Consensus MCP server in Portkey's MCP Registry with custom headers or per-user OAuth. - [Obot MCP Gateway](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/obot.md): Add the Consensus MCP server to Obot as a remote server with custom headers or spec-compliant per-user OAuth. - [Other gateways](https://docs.consensus.app/enterprise/gateways/other-gateways.md): Kong, Solo.io agentgateway, Zuplo, Docker MCP Gateway, and Boomi AI Gateway can front the Consensus MCP server with a static bearer header; each has a caveat worth knowing. - [What you can build with the Consensus API and MCP](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases.md): Search and return the full text of 400+ million research papers — for internal tools, scientific agents, and custom research systems. - [Start building with the Consensus API and MCP](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/get-started.md): Pick a surface, run your first filtered search, and find the guide for what you are building. - [Best practices](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/best-practices.md): The five primitives every Consensus workflow is built from, and how to tell a good use case from a poor one before you build it. - [Build internal research tools](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/internal-tools.md): How enterprise R&D teams, biotechs, and AI startups connect Consensus paper search to internal assistants, monitoring agents, literature tables, and scientific agents. - [Build custom research systems](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/research-systems.md): How academics and research groups use the Consensus API and MCP to build literature-review, writing, and reporting workflows they can reproduce. - [Use case library](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/gallery.md): Worked examples of what people build on Consensus, filterable by persona, each with the full prompt and API call behind it. - [Find a real citation for every claim in a draft](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/ground-a-manuscript.md): Paste a draft section and get every empirical claim matched to a real, verifiable paper — or flagged as unsupported before a reviewer finds it. - [Verify that every citation is real and supports its claim](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/citation-verification.md): Verify every reference in a document actually exists, then confirm each one says what the text citing it claims. - [Turn a syllabus into a recommended reading list](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/syllabus-reading-list.md): Extract course topics and learning outcomes from a syllabus, then produce a curated reading list of recent research with summaries and discussion questions. - [Find NIH grants for a research idea](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/grant-finder.md): Position a research idea against the literature, map it to the right NIH institutes and study sections, and surface NOSIs, open FOAs, and funded overlap. - [Screen abstracts against inclusion criteria](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/abstract-screening.md): Apply explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria across thousands of abstracts, with a decision log a second reviewer can audit. - [Build a PRISMA-ready search corpus](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/prisma-corpus.md): Assemble a reproducible, deduplicated record set with the flow counts a systematic review has to report. - [Write the search-strategy section of your methods](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/search-strategy-methods.md): Turn a logged search into the reproducible methods paragraph reviewers ask for — accurate because it was recorded as it ran. - [Find which journals to submit to](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/where-to-submit.md): Identify the journals actually publishing work like yours, with their quartile, so you target a realistic venue first. - [Track how a field's terminology changed over time](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/terminology-shift.md): Compare old and recent literature on the same concept so you search the terms the field actually used, not just the ones it uses now. - [Create a biomarker evidence report](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/biomarker-report.md): Assess the evidence for a biomarker's optimal range across Mendelian randomization, large cohorts, and trials — or establish that no evidence-based range exists. - [Build a drug target validation dossier](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/target-evidence-tiers.md): Human genetics, in vitro, animal, and clinical evidence for one target in a single pass — including what contradicts it. - [Monitor new research about a drug, device, or brand](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/brand-and-device-monitoring.md): Track what gets published about a drug, device, or brand, and route only the papers that change something. - [Grade a set of papers with your own evidence rubric](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/evidence-grading-rubric.md): Apply your organization's standard for what counts as good evidence, consistently, across every paper on a topic. - [Find the leading investigators in an indication](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/investigator-mapping.md): Rank the authors publishing most in a therapeutic area, split by region and by recent versus lifetime output. - [Assemble a payer evidence dossier](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/payer-evidence-dossier.md): Pull the cost-effectiveness, burden-of-illness, and real-world evidence a reimbursement submission needs, in one pass. - [Check whether a finding has human evidence yet](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/translational-readiness.md): Separate cell and animal work from human studies for a claim, and report the ratio — the number that tells you how translated a finding really is. - [Extract numbers and formulas from full-text papers](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/extract-values-from-full-text.md): Pull numbers, formulas, and parameters out of papers with their measurement conditions attached. - [Substantiate a product claim with published evidence](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/claim-substantiation.md): Build the evidence file behind a claim before it ships — including what contradicts it. - [Compare candidate materials against published test data](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/materials-comparison.md): Search published performance data for each candidate under your actual operating conditions, and find out which combinations nobody has tested. - [Find published work on a failure or degradation mechanism](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/failure-mode-scan.md): Check whether a defect you are seeing is a known mechanism with a published cause, before you spend a quarter rediscovering it. - [Find published process conditions for a manufacturing step](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/process-window-precedent.md): See what temperature, time, atmosphere, and concentration ranges others have published for a process, so you start from precedent rather than from scratch. - [Check a supplier's performance claim against independent research](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/supplier-claim-check.md): Test what a vendor says their material, tool, or process achieves against what the published literature independently reports. - [Find human-factors evidence for a design decision](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/human-factors-evidence.md): Pull the biomechanics, ergonomics, and usability research behind a product or workstation choice, before the decision gets defended after the fact. - [Build a reusable literature-review workflow](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/literature-review-skill.md): A repeatable review workflow that picks a search framework, allocates a search budget, and synthesizes findings into a research guide your whole team can run the same way. - [Track new papers across many topics on a schedule](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/scheduled-research-pipeline.md): Sweep hundreds of topics on a cron, diff against the last run, and report only what changed. - [Swap a hand-maintained paper corpus for full-text search](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/swap-a-paper-corpus.md): Replace a curated PubMed subset you maintain yourself with a weekly-refreshed full-text index, without rebuilding the infrastructure. - [Add a citable evidence layer to an agent you already ship](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/add-an-evidence-layer.md): Give a working agent access to peer-reviewed literature as a tool, so its claims carry citations instead of assertions. - [Answer one question with many parallel searches](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/parallel-search-angles.md): Decompose a research question into multiple search angles, gather evidence across all of them, and distill one cited answer. - [Screen thousands of target-disease pairs for evidence](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/high-throughput-screening.md): Pull literature evidence for every pair in a large matrix — the batch workload that breaks most retrieval APIs. - [Benchmark literature providers against your own ground truth](https://docs.consensus.app/use-cases/benchmark-retrieval.md): Build a curated query set with known-relevant papers and measure which retrieval provider actually surfaces them. ## OpenAPI Specs - [openapi](/openapi.json) This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.