grad-agent

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

• Discovers professors on arXiv in your research areas
• Verifies each candidate is actually faculty (Semantic Scholar, h-index, papers)
• Scrapes their lab page for a recruiting signal + email address
• Matches them to your strongest shipped project
• Drafts a specific, fact-checked cold email (Claude Haiku authors + verifies claims against paper abstracts)
• Compiles a per-school SOP to PDF (LaTeX)
• Tracks everything in xlsx: outreach, LOR requests, program deadlines
• Emails every draft to your inbox for review; nothing is sent to a professor without you

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

Install

pipx install grad-agent
# or, if you prefer pip 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/.env — secrets template

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

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
SMTP_SERVER=smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=you@gmail.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=<gmail app password>
SMTP_FROM=you@gmail.com
# Optional:
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, ...]
• seed_projects: 3 to 10 flagship projects with name, pitch, link, tags

Then:

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

Register with Claude Code

grad-agent register-claude

Prints the exact claude mcp add command. Once registered, /mcp in Claude Code shows grad-agent with ~25 tools.

Register with Claude Desktop

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

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

Daily autonomous run (macOS)

The package ships a launchd plist template. To fire every day at 08:00:

cp /path/to/grad_agent/templates/com.gradagent.daily.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.gradagent.daily.plist

Every morning: 3 verified faculty leads, hooks fact-checked against paper abstracts, in your inbox for review.

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
draft_cold_email(...)	Manual per-prof draft
draft_sop(...)	Compile a Columbia-style SOP PDF for one school
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.
• Fabricate a paper claim. The hook goes through a second Claude call that rejects any claim not present in the abstracts, and rewrites.
• Draft for programs you are ineligible for. If your degree_status is bachelors, PhD programs that require an MSc first are filtered out.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• macOS or Linux (Windows untested)
• pdflatex on PATH if you want SOP PDFs (macOS: MacTeX; Ubuntu: texlive-latex-recommended)
• 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
  programs.yaml        target programs
  .env                 secrets (gitignored)
  data/
    outreach_log.xlsx  every prof surfaced or drafted
    lor_log.xlsx       recommendation-letter tracker
    catalog.json       synced projects (GitHub + HF + local)
    db.sqlite          drafts + status
  drafts/              per-school SOP + email drafts

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/