Structured, scriptable, agent-native access to India's national reservoir of PhD theses — the machine API Shodhganga never shipped.
Shodhganga hosts 600,000+ Indian doctoral theses from 900+ universities but exposes no OAI, REST, or OpenSearch API — only HTML. This CLI turns every thesis into a structured Dublin Core record you can search and export as JSON, then mirror a research area into a local database for instant offline analysis with guide-centric indexes, university profiles, and subject trends the web UI can't produce.
Learn more at Shodhganga.
Quick Start
# confirm the CLI is wired and the site is reachable before searching
shodhganga-pp-cli doctor --dry-run
# keyword-search all theses and get structured rows
shodhganga-pp-cli thesis search --query "black hole physics" --limit 10
# pull the full Dublin Core metadata record for one thesis (accepts 305247 or 10603/305247)
shodhganga-pp-cli thesis get 305247 --json
# mirror a research area into the local store for offline analysis
shodhganga-pp-cli harvest "machine learning" --limit 100
# list every thesis a supervisor guided (harvest that area first)
shodhganga-pp-cli guide "Ghosh, Sushant G" --json
Unique Features
These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.
Local state that compounds
-
harvest — Mirror a research area's theses into a local database so you can search and analyze offline without re-hitting the site.
Reach for this first when an agent will run many follow-up queries over the same research area — harvest once, then everything else is instant and offline.
shodhganga-pp-cli harvest "machine learning" --limit 5
-
guide — List every thesis supervised by a given research guide across the harvested corpus.
Use when mapping a supervisor's body of work or building academic-lineage graphs the site can't produce.
shodhganga-pp-cli guide "Ghosh, Sushant G" --json
Corpus analytics
-
university stats — Aggregate a university's theses in the local store into a profile: thesis count, subject spread, and year range.
Use to compare institutions' doctoral output or profile a university's research strengths.
shodhganga-pp-cli university stats "Jamia Millia Islamia" --json
-
trends — Show how thesis counts for a subject change over completion year across the harvested corpus.
Use to spot rising or declining research areas in Indian doctoral output.
shodhganga-pp-cli trends --subject Physics --json
-
similar — Find theses in the local store that share the most subject keywords with a given thesis.
Use to expand a literature review outward from one relevant thesis.
shodhganga-pp-cli similar 10603/305247 --json
Recipes
Structured metadata for a known thesis
shodhganga-pp-cli thesis get 305247 --json --select title,researcher,guides,university,keywords
Pull just the fields you need from the full Dublin Core record; deeply nested output narrows cleanly with --select.
Harvest a research area for offline analysis
shodhganga-pp-cli harvest "quantum computing" --limit 200
Mirror a topic once; then trends, guide, similar, and 'search --data-source local' all run instantly against the local store.
Map a supervisor's students
shodhganga-pp-cli guide "Ghosh, Sushant G" --json
After harvesting the relevant area, list every thesis a research guide supervised.
Expand a literature review
shodhganga-pp-cli similar 305247
Find theses sharing the most subject keywords with a relevant one, ranked by overlap.
Usage
Run shodhganga-pp-cli --help for the full command reference and flag list.
Paths & environment variables
This CLI separates local files into four path kinds:
| Kind | Contents |
|---|
config | User-editable settings such as config.toml and saved profiles |
data | Durable local data such as data.db |
state | Runtime state such as persisted queries, jobs, and teach.log |
cache | Regenerable HTTP/cache files |
Each kind resolves independently. The ladder is:
- Per-kind env var:
SHODHGANGA_CONFIG_DIR, SHODHGANGA_DATA_DIR, SHODHGANGA_STATE_DIR, or SHODHGANGA_CACHE_DIR
--home <dir> for this invocationSHODHGANGA_HOME for a flat relocated root- XDG env vars:
XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_STATE_HOME, XDG_CACHE_HOME
- Platform defaults matching existing installs
For containers and agent sandboxes, prefer a single relocated root:
export SHODHGANGA_HOME=/srv/shodhganga
shodhganga-pp-cli doctor
Under SHODHGANGA_HOME=/srv/shodhganga, the four dirs resolve to /srv/shodhganga/config, /srv/shodhganga/data, /srv/shodhganga/state, and /srv/shodhganga/cache.
MCP servers do not receive CLI flags from the host. Put relocation in the host env block:
{
"mcpServers": {
"shodhganga": {
"command": "shodhganga-pp-mcp",
"env": {
"SHODHGANGA_HOME": "/srv/shodhganga"
}
}
}
}
Precedence matters in fleets: an ambient per-kind variable such as SHODHGANGA_DATA_DIR overrides an explicit --home for that kind. Use SHODHGANGA_HOME or the per-kind variables for durable fleet relocation; treat --home as the weaker per-invocation lever.
Relocation is one-way. Unsetting SHODHGANGA_HOME does not move files back to platform defaults, and doctor cannot find files left under a former root. Move the files manually before unsetting relocation variables.
Existing installs keep working because the platform-default rung matches the legacy layout. Run shodhganga-pp-cli doctor --fail-on warn to check path warnings in automation.
Commands
browse
Browse theses by facet (title, author, subject, date)
shodhganga-pp-cli browse - Browse theses by title, author, subject, keyword, or date
thesis
Search and retrieve Indian PhD theses
shodhganga-pp-cli thesis get - Get a thesis item page by handle number (the NNNNN in 10603/NNNNN)shodhganga-pp-cli thesis search - Search theses by keyword across all of Shodhganga
university
Look up universities and collections (DSpace communities)
shodhganga-pp-cli university <id> - Get a university/community page by handle number
Self-learning loop
This CLI caches per-question discovery so repeat queries skip the walk and structurally similar queries get answered via entity substitution. The loop also self-captures: every invocation is journaled locally, and failed-flag corrections plus fresh teaches surface as candidates on the next recall for confirm/reject judgment. Agents call recall before discovery and fire teach & after answering. See the ## Automatic learning section in SKILL.md for the full protocol.
shodhganga-pp-cli recall <query> - Look up cached resources for a query before running discoveryshodhganga-pp-cli teach - Record a query -> resource mapping (silent on success, safe to background with &)shodhganga-pp-cli learnings list - Inspect taught rowsshodhganga-pp-cli learnings forget <query> - Undo a teachshodhganga-pp-cli learnings candidates - List auto-captured candidates awaiting confirm/rejectshodhganga-pp-cli learnings stats - Local loop metrics: recall hit rate, teach-to-reuse, playbook resolution, candidate countsshodhganga-pp-cli teach-pattern - Install a query/resource template up frontshodhganga-pp-cli teach-lookup - Add an entity mapping (e.g. country code, team alias) for pattern substitution
Pass --no-learn or set SHODHGANGA_NO_LEARN=true to disable the loop for deterministic flows.
The local store's schema version stamp is one-way: once this version of shodhganga-pp-cli opens the database, older binaries refuse it with a version error — upgrade the binary rather than downgrading.
Output Formats
# Human-readable table (default in terminal, JSON when piped)
shodhganga-pp-cli browse
# JSON for scripting and agents
shodhganga-pp-cli browse --json
# Filter to specific fields
shodhganga-pp-cli browse --json --select id,name,status
# Dry run — show the request without sending
shodhganga-pp-cli browse --dry-run
# Agent mode — JSON + compact + no prompts in one flag
shodhganga-pp-cli browse --agent
Agent Usage
This CLI is designed for AI agent consumption:
- Non-interactive - never prompts, every input is a flag
- Pipeable -
--json output to stdout, errors to stderr
- Filterable -
--select id,name returns only fields you need
- Previewable -
--dry-run shows the request without sending
- Read-only by default - this CLI does not create, update, delete, publish, send, or mutate remote resources
- Offline-friendly - sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available
- Agent-safe by default - no colors or formatting unless
--human-friendly is set
Exit codes: 0 success, 2 usage error, 3 not found, 5 API error, 7 rate limited, 10 config error.
Health Check
shodhganga-pp-cli doctor
Verifies configuration and connectivity to the API.
Configuration
Run shodhganga-pp-cli doctor to see the resolved config, data, state, and cache directories. The platform-default config path is ~/.config/shodhganga-pp-cli/config.toml; --home, SHODHGANGA_HOME, and per-kind env vars can relocate it.
Static request headers can be configured under headers; per-command header overrides take precedence.
Troubleshooting
Not found errors (exit code 3)
- Check the resource ID is correct
- Run the
list command to see available items
API-specific
- thesis search returns no rows for a topic you expect results for — Shodhganga tokenizes loosely; try a broader single-keyword query, or raise --limit
- guide/similar/trends/university-stats return empty — these read the local store — run 'shodhganga-pp-cli harvest ' first to populate it
- thesis get says handle not found — pass the bare number (305247), the full handle (10603/305247), or the hdl.handle.net URI; all are accepted
- thesis search or harvest hangs or times out — Shodhganga's search backend is occasionally overloaded and slow; item lookups (thesis get) stay fast. Retry, lower --limit, or raise --timeout (e.g. --timeout 90s).