paper-qa

library2026.3.18pypypi✓ verified 84d ago

PaperQA is an LLM chain for answering questions from documents (PDFs, webpages, etc.) using retrieval-augmented generation. Current version: 2026.3.18. Released on a monthly cadence.

ai-ml

pip install paper-qa

INSTALL

IMPORT

SIG · PAPER-QA

paper-qa

ai-mlpythonv2026.3.18

harness data pending

Install & Compatibility

Where this runs

No compatibility data collected yet for this library.

Code

Verified usage

Verified import paths — ran on the pinned version, not inferred.

PaperQA

✓ from paperqa.docs import Docs

✗ from paperqa import PaperQA

The old PaperQA class was renamed to Docs in v2023+. Using 'from paperqa import PaperQA' raises ImportError.

Settings

✓ from paperqa.settings import Settings

✗ from paperqa import Settings

Settings is located in paperqa.settings module, not top-level paperqa.

Initialize Docs, add a document source, and ask a question. Requires valid LLM credentials (e.g., OPENAI_API_KEY) set in environment.

import os from paperqa.docs import Docs from paperqa.settings import Settings # Setup docs object settings = Settings() docs = Docs(settings=settings) # Add a PDF or text source docs.add("https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.10601.pdf") # Ask a question answer = docs.query("What is the main contribution of this paper?") print(answer.formatted_answer)

Debug

Known issues

breakingThe old PaperQA class was removed in version 2023. Use Docs instead.

fix

Replace 'from paperqa import PaperQA' with 'from paperqa.docs import Docs' and use Docs class.

affects: >=2023

breakingThe settings module moved. Importing from paperqa.settings is required.

fix

Change from 'from paperqa import Settings' to 'from paperqa.settings import Settings'.

affects: >=2023

gotchaDocs.query() is async if using async backends. Ensure you await the call or use asyncio.run().

fix

Use 'await docs.query(...)' in async context, or wrap in asyncio.run(docs.query(...)).

affects: all

deprecatedThe 'add_pdf' and 'add_text' methods are deprecated in favor of 'add'.

fix

Replace 'docs.add_pdf(path)' with 'docs.add(path)' and 'docs.add_text(text)' with 'docs.add(text)'.

affects: >=2025

Errors

Common errors & fixes

ImportError: cannot import name 'PaperQA' from 'paperqa'

PaperQA class was renamed to Docs in later versions.

fix

Use 'from paperqa.docs import Docs' instead.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'paperqa.docs'

Old version of paper-qa (pre-2023) does not have the docs module.

fix

Upgrade paper-qa to at least 2023.0.0: pip install --upgrade paper-qa

Upgrade

Version history

2026.3.18latest on PyPI · released Mar 18, 2026

Audit

Dependencies

No dependency data recorded yet.

Agent activity

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Resources

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