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Superpowers/Catalog/DOI lookup API
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Look up a DOI by API

Resolve a DOI to its registered title, authors (with ORCID when known), year and publisher from Crossref, by API or from your AI agent. Free.

Ask your agent
Here are the 40 DOIs from my thesis bibliography. Check each one resolves, and give me title, first author and year so I can spot citation mistakes.
Paste this into Claude, ChatGPT or any agent connected to Superpowers.
Failed calls are freeReady to useWorks with your AI agent
What you get backFrom a real call on 10/11/2026 · Crossref
Result of real lookups
Which paper is DOI 10.1038/nature14539?
  • "Deep learning" by Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, 2015, published by Springer Science and Business Media (Nature).
  • DOI 10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 is "Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine" (2020), with all 29 authors listed.
  • Each lookup took about a second. An arXiv DOI (10.48550/...) was not found: arXiv registers its DOIs with DataCite, not Crossref.
Full response (run_LC0Ghjxf8DFvRA).

What comes back

What you get on every lookup, whichever source answers.

  • The DOI and its doi.org link
  • Registered title of the work
  • Every author, with their ORCID iD when the publisher registered it
  • Publication year
  • Publisher on record

Providers

Same input and output for every provider. Success rate over 30 days shows after 5 real calls.

ProviderPrice per callSuccessStatus
CrossrefFree67%Available

Frequently asked questions

Which DOIs does it cover?

DOIs registered with Crossref, which covers most journal articles, books and conference papers. DOIs from other agencies, such as DataCite (arXiv, Zenodo, many datasets), are not found here.

Is the author list complete?

It lists every author the publisher registered, in order. In the Covid-19 vaccine paper above that was 29 names.

Can I check a whole bibliography?

Yes. Call it once per DOI; failed lookups are not charged. A DOI that is not found usually has a typo or belongs to another registration agency.

How much does it cost?

Nothing. DOI lookups are free. You need an account for an API key, and the $5 welcome credit is there for the paid tools.

Can my AI agent use it?

Yes. Add the Superpowers MCP server to Claude, Cursor, Codex or ChatGPT and ask in plain words, or call POST /v1/run with the tool crossref.lookup-doi. To find papers by topic, see the research paper search guide.

For developersAPI request, full response, returned fields and MCP setup

Pass a DOI and get the paper's registered title, authors, publication year, publisher and link, from Crossref. Free, from the API or your AI agent.

Returned fields

doi / urlThe DOI and its doi.org link
titleRegistered title of the work
authors[].name / orcidEvery author, with their ORCID iD when the publisher registered it
yearPublication year
publisherPublisher on record

Request

curl -X POST https://superpowers.tools/v1/run \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer $SUPERPOWERS_KEY' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"tool":"crossref.lookup-doi","idempotency_key":"example-1","input":{"doi":"10.1038/nature14539"}}'

Normalized response

Call made on 10/11/2026 through Crossref, answered in 1261 ms. Full response (run_LC0Ghjxf8DFvRA).
{
  "doi": "10.1038/nature14539",
  "title": "Deep learning",
  "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539",
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Yann LeCun",
      "orcid": null
    },
    {
      "name": "Yoshua Bengio",
      "orcid": null
    },
    {
      "name": "Geoffrey Hinton",
      "orcid": null
    }
  ],
  "year": 2015,
  "publisher": "Springer Science and Business Media LLC"
}

MCP configuration

Add the MCP server to Claude, Cursor or another client and ask in plain language.
Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http superpowers https://superpowers.tools/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $SUPERPOWERS_KEY"
Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json)
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "superpowers": {
      "url": "https://superpowers.tools/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${env:SUPERPOWERS_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}
Codex
codex mcp add superpowers --url https://superpowers.tools/mcp \
  --bearer-token-env-var SUPERPOWERS_KEY

Start with $5 of credit

This call is free; the credit covers the paid tools. No card needed to start.

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