pwc CLI

A fast, read-only command-line client for exploring the public Papers with Code catalog.

Use pwc to search papers, browse benchmarks and find state-of-the-art (SOTA) by domain, read paper metadata and Markdown, discover recent, trending, and related work, inspect paper lineage, explore tasks, methods, and conferences. Public reads are anonymous: no account, API token, or Python environment is required.

pwc search "small vision language models" --limit 3
pwc paper info 2501.01234

Installation

Prebuilt binary (recommended)

The installer downloads the binary for your platform, verifies its SHA-256 checksum, and installs it as ~/.local/bin/pwc:

pwc_repo=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/huggingface/pwc-cli/main
curl -LsSf "$pwc_repo/standalone_cli/install.py" | python3

The installer selects the latest release by default. Pass --version VERSION after python3 - to explicitly pin a release. It also reports whether ~/.local/bin is on PATH and prints a persistent shell instruction when needed.

Prebuilt releases support:

• Linux x86-64
• macOS Intel (x86-64)
• macOS Apple Silicon (arm64)

Every release includes checksum files and GitHub build-provenance attestations. See the latest release to download and verify an artifact manually.

Install from source

Python 3.10 or newer is required for source installations.

With uv:

uv tool install 'git+https://github.com/huggingface/pwc-cli.git#subdirectory=standalone_cli'

Or with pipx:

pipx install 'git+https://github.com/huggingface/pwc-cli.git#subdirectory=standalone_cli'

To work from a clone instead:

git clone https://github.com/huggingface/pwc-cli.git
cd pwc-cli
uv tool install ./standalone_cli

Confirm the installation:

pwc version

Quick start

Search the paper catalog:

pwc search "retrieval augmented generation"
pwc search "vision transformers" --mode semantic --limit 20
pwc search "attention" --page 2 --limit 10

Inspect or read a paper:

pwc paper info 1706.03762
pwc paper info 1706.03762 --include-resources  # linked GitHub, project, and HF URLs
pwc paper info "Attention Is All You Need"
pwc paper read 1706.03762

Discover papers:

pwc paper recent --limit 10
pwc paper trending --limit 20 --max-age-days 90
pwc paper related 1706.03762 --limit 4
pwc paper lineage list 1706.03762

List and filter papers:

pwc paper list --conference NeurIPS --page-size 20
pwc paper list --search "diffusion" --published-after 2025-01-01
pwc paper list --order-by citation_count --order-dir desc

Explore the research taxonomy and conferences:

pwc task list
pwc task list --area Vision
pwc task list --group-by-area  # force grouped Markdown when piping/capturing
pwc method list --area Audio
pwc method list --area General --introduced-year 2017
pwc conference list
pwc conference list --year 2025

Browse benchmarks:

pwc benchmark list
pwc benchmark list --group-by-area --area Vision
pwc benchmark list --search ImageNet
pwc benchmark list --task OCR
pwc benchmark list --task image-classification --include-descendants
pwc benchmark list --min-eval-count 10 --order-by paper_count --order-dir desc
pwc benchmark --name "SWE-Bench Pro"

Command reference

Every PAPER argument accepts a modern or legacy arXiv ID, a numeric external-paper ID, or a quoted exact paper title. Title matching is case-insensitive. Ambiguous titles are rejected with the matching IDs instead of silently selecting one paper.

Command	Description
pwc search QUERY	Search for papers by title, topic, author, or arXiv ID
pwc paper info PAPER	Show paper metadata and abstract; optionally include linked GitHub, project, and HF URLs
pwc paper read PAPER	Print the stored paper Markdown
pwc paper list	List and filter papers
pwc paper recent	List recently published papers
pwc paper trending	List trending papers
pwc paper related PAPER	Find related papers
pwc paper lineage list PAPER	Show linked Markdown sections for a paper's predecessors and successors
pwc task list	Group visible top-level tasks by area in a terminal; support flat pagination and area filters
pwc method list	List methods and filter them by research area or introduction year
pwc conference list	List conferences and filter them by year
pwc benchmark list	Group top benchmarks by area and task; support flat filters and task-trend ranking
pwc benchmark --name NAME	Show a benchmark's top models, papers, scores, and publication dates
pwc version	Show the CLI and API contract versions

Run pwc --help, pwc COMMAND --help, or pwc paper COMMAND --help for all available options.

Output and scripting

Task and benchmark lists use grouped Markdown in an interactive terminal; --flat forces their paginated tables and --group-by-area forces Markdown when piping. Other list and search commands use aligned columns in a terminal and lossless TSV when captured. Detail commands use labeled metadata or Markdown. Add --json to any data command for machine-readable output:

pwc search "language models" --limit 5 --json
pwc paper info 1706.03762 --json
pwc benchmark list --task image-classification --json

JSON responses include a top-level schema_version and data field:

{
  "schema_version": "v1",
  "data": {}
}

The stable exit codes are:

Code	Meaning
0	Success
2	Invalid command or arguments
3	Network or server failure
4	Invalid API response

Configuration

pwc uses https://paperswithcode.co/api/v1 by default. To connect to another compatible v1 API, set PWC_API_URL:

PWC_API_URL=http://localhost:8000/api/v1 pwc search "transformers"

Scope

The public CLI is intentionally anonymous and read-only. It does not include authentication, mutation, ingestion, publication, image, embedding, CRON, or infrastructure-maintenance commands.

Development

Run the CLI from a checkout:

uv run --project standalone_cli pwc --help

Run the focused test and contract checks:

uv run --project standalone_cli --with pytest pytest standalone_cli/tests
uv run python standalone_cli/scripts/check_contract.py

The implementation lives in standalone_cli.