AlphaXiv

Feynman bundles an alphaXiv client (@companion-ai/alpha-hub) for searching arXiv papers, reading AI-generated paper reports or full text, asking questions about a paper, and reading a paper’s linked code. alphaXiv covers arXiv papers; DOI-only papers are read through web fetch or Europe PMC instead.

Authentication

Sign in during feynman setup or at any time:

feynman alpha login

On a machine without a browser (SSH, Docker, WSL without a display), feynman alpha login prints the sign-in URL. Open it in a browser on any machine and finish signing in. The browser then lands on a http://127.0.0.1:9876/callback?code=... page that fails to load; copy that full URL, paste it into the waiting terminal, and press Enter.

Check your authentication status:

feynman alpha status

Agent tools

Tool	Purpose
alpha_search	Search papers. Modes: semantic (default), keyword, agentic, both, all
alpha_get_paper	Fetch a paper’s AI-generated report, or raw full text with fullText, plus any local annotation. section or sections return only abstract, introduction, methodology, experiments, results, discussion, limitations, or conclusion when detectable
alpha_ask_paper	Ask a targeted question about a paper’s PDF
alpha_read_code	Read files from a paper’s GitHub repository; / gives an overview
alpha_annotate_paper	Write or clear a local note on a paper
alpha_list_annotations	List local paper notes

The lead agent calls these tools directly. The bundled researcher agent does not load them; it runs feynman alpha ... through its shell instead, after checking feynman alpha status.

CLI

The same client is available from the terminal:

feynman alpha search "scaling laws"
feynman alpha get 2401.12345
feynman alpha ask 2401.12345 "What optimizer did they use?"
feynman alpha code https://github.com/org/repo src/model.py

Storage

The alphaXiv client keeps its login state and local paper annotations under ~/.ahub, separate from Feynman’s ~/.feynman directory. Remove ~/.ahub to clear them during uninstall.

Without AlphaXiv

Feynman works without an alphaXiv login. Paper discovery then goes through feynman_science_database_search (Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, arXiv ID lookup, PubMed, Europe PMC, bioRxiv/medRxiv, Crossref) and web search, and full text comes from fetch_content on arXiv or open-access pages.