PubCrawl — OpenClaw plugin
Biomedical research tools for OpenClaw agents: PubMed literature search, ClinicalTrials.gov, and US (FDA) / UK (eMC) drug labelling. Built by PharmaTools.AI.
This is the OpenClaw plugin build of the PubCrawl MCP server. It reuses the same data layer and exposes 12 agent-callable tools natively, so any OpenClaw agent can search the literature and drug labels without an external MCP process.
Tools
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
search_pubmed | Search PubMed; returns PMIDs, titles, authors, journals, DOIs |
get_abstract | Structured abstract, keywords, MeSH terms, PMC ID for a PMID |
get_full_text | Open-access full text from PubMed Central (sections, captions, ref count) |
find_related | Related papers for a PMID, ranked by PubMed's neighbor score |
format_citation | Format a PMID as APA, Vancouver, Harvard, or BibTeX |
trending_papers | Recent papers on a topic, optionally high-impact journals only |
get_uspi | FDA US Prescribing Information from DailyMed (LOINC-coded sections) |
get_smpc | UK/EU Summary of Product Characteristics from eMC |
compare_labels | US PI vs UK SmPC side-by-side, with mapped sections |
search_by_indication | Drugs approved for a condition, with US/UK availability |
search_trials | Search ClinicalTrials.gov by condition, intervention, status, phase |
get_trial | Full trial detail by NCT ID (eligibility, design, arms, outcomes, PMIDs) |
All tools are read-only and hit public APIs (NCBI E-utilities, openFDA, DailyMed, eMC, ClinicalTrials.gov v2).
Install
# From ClawHub (preferred)
openclaw plugins install clawhub:nickjlamb/openclaw-pubcrawl
# From npm
openclaw plugins install npm:@nickjlamb/openclaw-pubcrawl
# Local checkout (development)
openclaw plugins install --link ./openclaw-plugin
Restart the Gateway if it doesn't reload automatically:
openclaw gateway restart
openclaw plugins inspect pubcrawl --runtime
Configuration
All tools work with no configuration. To raise the PubMed rate limit from 3 to 10 requests/second, add a free NCBI API key:
{
plugins: {
entries: {
pubcrawl: {
config: { ncbiApiKey: "your-ncbi-key" },
},
},
},
}
Build from source
Requires Node >= 22.
npm install
npm run build # tsc -> dist/
npm run plugin:build # regenerate openclaw.plugin.json from the entry
npm run plugin:validate # verify manifest matches the built entry
plugin:build and plugin:validate require the openclaw CLI (installed as a peer dependency). Always commit openclaw.plugin.json and package.json after running plugin:build.
Publish to ClawHub
npm run build
npm run plugin:build
clawhub package publish nickjlamb/openclaw-pubcrawl --dry-run
clawhub package publish nickjlamb/openclaw-pubcrawl
Relationship to the MCP server
The src/lib/* modules are copied from the PubCrawl MCP server and are the source of truth for API access, parsing, and caching. Only the tool-registration layer differs: the MCP server uses McpServer.tool() with zod schemas; this plugin uses defineToolPlugin with TypeBox schemas. Keep the two lib copies in sync when the upstream server changes.
License
MIT — built by PharmaTools.AI.