grad-agent

grad-agent

An autonomous MCP agent that helps you apply to fully funded MS and PhD programs.

Discover and draft

• Discovers professors on arXiv in your research areas, or deadline-driven per program (run_program_batch)
• Resolves each professor's identity by anchoring on the trigger paper's canonical Semantic Scholar authorId, not the name string — name collisions like "Wei Zhang" are structurally impossible to confuse
• Refuses to draft when identity cannot be anchored; the specific mismatch (e.g. identity ambiguous: 2 comparable candidates, h=40 vs h=38) is persisted to a skipped sheet for audit
• Verifies each candidate is actually faculty (h-index and paper-count gates)
• Filters by region (target_regions: [US, Canada] in your profile; keyword table + homepage TLD + LLM fallback)
• Scrapes their lab page for a recruiting signal + email address
• Matches them to your strongest shipped project (tag overlap + TF-IDF semantic layer + learned response-rate bias)
• Drafts a specific, fact-checked cold email: Claude Haiku writes a hook spanning the prof's recent papers, then a second call verifies every claim against the abstracts and rewrites anything unsupported
• Scores each draft 1 to 10 for fit, with a one-line reason, so you can triage in seconds
• Freshness warnings on every draft: cross-checks the S2 affiliation against the prof's live homepage (flags MISMATCH if they may have moved labs) and flags researchers who have not published in 2+ years

Learn and follow through

• Detects professor replies via read-only IMAP and tags the log automatically
• Learns from outcomes: projects that earn replies rank up in future matching (outcome_report shows what works)
• Drafts follow-up nudges for profs silent 10+ days; never nudges the same prof twice
• Generates an interview prep one-pager when a prof replies: their papers summarised, likely questions, your talking points

Track everything

• Compiles per-school SOPs to PDF (LaTeX), versioned so no draft is ever overwritten
• Tracks outreach, LOR requests, program deadlines, and external scholarships (Mastercard, Commonwealth, Fulbright, Rhodes, and more) in xlsx/yaml
• Emails every draft to your inbox for review; nothing is ever sent to a professor without you

Bundled Claude Code / Claude Desktop skills

Installing grad-agent ships a set of Anthropic Skills you can invoke from any Claude client that supports them (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, MCP-aware IDEs). grad-agent init symlinks them into ~/.claude/skills/ automatically; to (re)install without running init, use grad-agent install-skills (add --force to replace existing entries, or --target <dir> to link elsewhere).

• sop-writing — rules for MS/PhD Statement of Purpose drafting, synthesized from MIT CommLab, MIT CAPD, Berkeley Grad Div, Harvard GSAS, Stanford, and CS-faculty guides. Pairs with the LaTeX SOP compile step.
• lor-writing — rules for letters of recommendation, including the common case where the applicant ghost-drafts a letter for a recommender to sign. Encodes multi-letter differentiation, recommender realism, HHMI bias hygiene, and a banned-phrase regex sweep. Supports an optional letterhead / company logo via the LOR_LETTERHEAD_PATH env var (with LOR_LETTERHEAD_WIDTH, default 2.2in) so the LaTeX compile drops your image into the top of the letter — leave it unset for a plain top block the recommender can paste onto their own letterhead. grad-agent init will prompt for the letterhead path interactively; to change it later (or swap letterheads between recommenders) run grad-agent set-letterhead /path/to/image.png --width 2.5in (pass no path to clear it).
• Cold-email drafter (grad_agent/drafters/cold_email.py) — rewritten around PhD outreach best-practices (specific paper anchor, one concrete overlap, no un-anchored superlatives, no "I read your paper" claims).

Runs as a stdio MCP server for Claude Code / Claude Desktop / any MCP client, or as a plain CLI.

Published on:

• PyPI: grad-agent
• MCP Registry: io.github.i-ninte/grad-agent

Install

Pick one:

# Recommended for MCP clients (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, etc.)
uvx grad-agent server      # single-shot, no persistent install

# Persistent CLI install
pipx install grad-agent

# Or in a venv
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install grad-agent

Set up in 5 minutes

grad-agent init

This writes:

• ~/.grad-agent/profile.yaml — your identity, projects, preferences
• ~/.grad-agent/programs.yaml — target programs (seeded)
• ~/.grad-agent/scholarships.yaml — external scholarships with deadlines (seeded)
• ~/.grad-agent/.env — secrets template

Fill in ~/.grad-agent/.env:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
SMTP_SERVER=smtp.gmail.com        # presets for Outlook/Yahoo/Zoho in the template
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=you@gmail.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=<gmail app password>
SMTP_FROM=you@gmail.com
# Optional:
S2_API_KEY=                       # free Semantic Scholar key, dedicated rate limits
                                  # (client-side throttle already enforces >=1.1s between requests)
IMAP_SERVER=imap.gmail.com        # read-only reply detection; defaults to SMTP creds
GITHUB_USERNAME=your-gh
GITHUB_TOKEN=github_pat_...
HF_USERNAME=your-hf

Fill in the important bits of ~/.grad-agent/profile.yaml:

• name, identity_line, portfolio
• cv_path, transcript_path (absolute paths)
• degree_status: bachelors | masters (drives PhD eligibility gating)
• target_term, target_degree
• research_areas: [nlp, ai4health, ...]
• target_regions: [US, Canada] — only draft for profs in these regions (empty = anywhere)
• seed_projects: 3 to 10 flagship projects with name, pitch, link, tags

Profile edits apply immediately, even while a long-running MCP session is open.

Then:

grad-agent sync        # scan projects (GitHub + HF + local)
grad-agent run         # one batch, drafts land in your inbox

Register with Claude Code

Three commands, in order:

pipx install grad-agent
pipx ensurepath                              # macOS/Linux: opens ~/.local/bin on PATH
                                             # Windows: opens %USERPROFILE%\.local\bin on PATH
claude mcp add grad-agent grad-agent server

On Windows you may need to open a new PowerShell or Terminal window after pipx ensurepath for the PATH change to take effect.

Prefer a zero-install one-liner? Skip pipx and use uvx:

claude mcp add grad-agent uvx grad-agent server

Then in a new Claude Code session:

/mcp

You should see grad-agent connected with ~36 tools. Before it does anything useful, run grad-agent init (or uvx grad-agent init) and fill in ~/.grad-agent/.env and ~/.grad-agent/profile.yaml as described in the setup section above.

If you skipped pipx ensurepath, grad-agent register-claude prints an absolute-path variant of the command that works without PATH changes.

Register with Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grad-agent": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["grad-agent", "server"]
    }
  }
}

The uvx command needs no prior install. If you already ran pipx install grad-agent, you can use "command": "grad-agent", "args": ["server"] instead.

Any other MCP client (Cursor, Zed, Windsurf) uses the same manifest shape; just point them at uvx grad-agent server.

Daily autonomous run

The package ships scheduler templates for all three OSes. grad-agent schedule emits the right one for your platform:

grad-agent schedule --dest .

Then follow the install instructions the command prints. In case you want them up front:

macOS (launchd):

cp com.gradagent.daily.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.gradagent.daily.plist

Linux (systemd user timer, fires at 08:00 local):

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp grad-agent-daily.service grad-agent-daily.timer ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now grad-agent-daily.timer

Windows (Task Scheduler):

# In an elevated PowerShell prompt:
schtasks /Create /TN "grad-agent-daily" /XML .\grad-agent-daily.xml

Or import the XML via the Task Scheduler GUI (Action → Import Task).

Every morning: replies auto-detected via IMAP, follow-up nudges drafted for silent profs, 3 identity-verified faculty leads with fit scores (best fit first), hooks fact-checked against paper abstracts, freshness warnings when a prof's S2 record and live homepage disagree, plus program and scholarship deadline warnings — all in one review email. Skipped leads are persisted with the specific mismatch reason (view with skipped_log_view or open the skipped sheet).

What each MCP tool does

Tool	Purpose
run_daily_batch(n, area)	Full pipeline: verify → recruiting → hook + verify → draft → log
outreach_log_view(limit)	Show last N rows of the outreach xlsx
outreach_mark_sent(prof, uni)	Flag a row as actually sent to the prof
sync_catalog(source)	Pull projects from github, hf, or local
list_projects_in_catalog()	Show every project the matcher can see
list_programs()	Your target programs
upcoming_deadlines(days)	Any program deadline in the next N days
lor_add / lor_outstanding / lor_mark	Recommendation-letter tracker
run_program_batch(program_id, n)	Deadline-driven batch: draft for one program's faculty
skipped_log_view(limit)	Audit trail of skipped leads with the specific stage + mismatch reason
s2_cache_invalidate(query, all)	Selectively purge Semantic Scholar cache entries by author name or id
followups_due(days)	Drafted nudges for profs silent 10+ days
outreach_mark_followup(prof)	Record a sent nudge (never nudged twice)
outreach_mark_response(prof, outcome)	Tag replies; feeds the matcher's learning loop
outcome_report()	Response rates by area and project
ingest_replies()	Read-only IMAP scan; auto-tags replies in the log
interview_prep(prof)	One-page brief: their papers, likely questions, your talking points
list_scholarships(region)	External scholarships filtered by eligibility region
upcoming_scholarship_deadlines(days)	Scholarship deadlines approaching
draft_cold_email(...)	Manual per-prof draft
draft_sop(...)	Compile a Columbia-style SOP PDF (versioned: sop_v1, v2, ...)
send_draft_to_me(path)	Ship any draft file to your review inbox
discover_profs(area)	arXiv + OpenReview scan (raw candidates, no verification)

Blog publishing tools (publish_article, update_article, ...) are gated behind blog.enabled: true in profile.yaml and are specific to the author's Turso-backed Next.js portfolio. Most users can ignore them.

What the agent will not do

• Send any email to a professor. Every send is manual, from your Gmail, after you read the draft.
• Touch your inbox beyond reading. IMAP access is read-only: it never sends, deletes, or marks messages.
• Fabricate a paper claim. The hook goes through a second Claude call that rejects any claim not present in the abstracts, and rewrites.
• Email the same professor twice. Deduplication is keyed on the Semantic Scholar authorId, with a name fallback for legacy rows, and follow-ups are marked so no prof is nudged more than once.
• Draft for the wrong person when two profs share a name. Identity is resolved from the trigger paper's authorId, not the name string; ambiguous cases are refused and logged.
• Hide why a lead was rejected. Every skip is persisted to the skipped sheet in outreach_log.xlsx with the stage (identity, faculty-gate, region, dedup, no-papers) and the exact mismatch — not buried in old review emails.
• Exceed Semantic Scholar's rate limit. Client-side throttle enforces ≥1.1s between requests, with exponential backoff on any 429 or 5xx.
• Draft for programs you are ineligible for. If your degree_status is bachelors, PhD programs that require an MSc first are filtered out. Same gate for scholarships outside your eligibility region.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• macOS, Linux, or Windows (all three tested in CI on 3.10 / 3.11 / 3.12)
• pdflatex on PATH if you want SOP PDFs (macOS: MacTeX; Ubuntu: texlive-latex-recommended; Windows: MiKTeX)
• Anthropic API key
• Gmail (or another SMTP) for the review-mailer

Where your data lives

Everything is under ~/.grad-agent/ by default, or $GRAD_AGENT_HOME if set:

~/.grad-agent/
  profile.yaml         identity + preferences (regions, seed projects, ...)
  programs.yaml        target programs with eligibility rules + deadlines
  scholarships.yaml    external scholarships with region eligibility + deadlines
  .env                 secrets (gitignored)
  data/
    outreach_log.xlsx  outreach sheet (drafts + outcomes) + skipped sheet (audit trail)
    lor_log.xlsx       recommendation-letter tracker
    catalog.json       synced projects (GitHub + HF + local)
    s2_cache.json      Semantic Scholar lookups (14 day TTL)
    region_cache.json  LLM-inferred regions for unusual affiliations
    db.sqlite          drafts + status
  drafts/              per-school SOP versions + email drafts
    prep/              interview prep one-pagers

Contributing

MIT licensed. PRs welcome for: more program templates, non-Gmail SMTP presets, non-arXiv source adapters, and better prof-verification heuristics.

Author

Kwabena Obeng · i-ninte.github.io/portfolio/