openresearch-mcp 0.2.0

Zero-auth cross-domain research MCP server — web, academic, GitHub, news, weather, macro/finance, SEC, biomedical, Bluesky, YouTube, and more.

openresearch-mcp

Zero-auth cross-domain research MCP server. Works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, OpenCode, Open WebUI, or any MCP-compatible agent — no API keys required.

Tools

Tool	Source	Notes
web_search	DuckDuckGo	Optional site= param to scope to a domain (e.g. arxiv.org)
read_url	Any webpage	Strips nav/scripts, returns clean text
read_pdf	Any PDF or arXiv	Accepts /abs/, /pdf/, /html/ arXiv URLs interchangeably
search_openalex	OpenAlex	250M+ works, zero rate limiting; set OPENALEX_EMAIL for polite pool
search_hacker_news	HN via Algolia	Story search with points + comment counts
search_stackoverflow	Stack Overflow API	Set STACKEXCHANGE_KEY for higher quota
read_repo	GitHub public repos	README + file tree + key docs; set GITHUB_TOKEN for 5k req/hr
get_youtube_transcript	YouTube captions	Accepts full URLs, youtu.be/ links, shorts, or bare video IDs
get_current_date	Server clock	Current UTC date/time — anchors relative requests ("last 30 days") instead of guessing
get_weather_forecast	Open-Meteo	Current conditions + up to 16-day forecast by place name; no key. See licensing note below
get_historical_weather	Open-Meteo	Climate series since 1940 for a place + date range, aggregated monthly/yearly; no key. See licensing note below
search_indicators	World Bank	Find an indicator code by keyword ("GDP", "migration"); feed into get_country_indicator
get_country_indicator	World Bank	Yearly socio-economic series (GDP, population, inflation, migration, life expectancy…) by country + code; no key
get_fx_rate	Frankfurter (ECB)	Currency rates: latest, a historical date, or a date-range series (downsample week/month); no key
get_crypto_price	CoinGecko	Crypto price (current or daily history) by coin id/symbol vs a quote currency; no key
search_news	GDELT	Fresh global news on a topic (multilingual); returns articles to feed into read_url; no key (rate-limited ~1/5s)
search_europepmc	Europe PMC	Biomedical/life-science papers; flags open-access and gives a PDF URL to feed into read_pdf; no key
search_bluesky_users	Bluesky	Find researcher/dev profiles by name, handle, or bio; no key
get_bluesky_profile	Bluesky	Full bio + follower/post counts for a handle; no key
read_bluesky_feed	Bluesky	A user's recent original posts (reposts/replies filtered); no key
get_company_financials	SEC EDGAR	Annual revenue, earnings, assets for a US-listed company by ticker (10-K filings); no key (set SEC_USER_AGENT for heavy use)
search_sec_filings	SEC EDGAR	Full-text search of filings (10-K/10-Q/8-K) by keyword/company; returns a document URL to feed into read_url/read_pdf; no key

Install

From the MCP Registry (recommended for Claude Desktop / Cursor)

The server is listed on the official MCP Registry as io.github.olanokhin/openresearch-mcp. Registry-aware clients can discover and install it without manual config — search for openresearch-mcp in your client's MCP browser.

From PyPI

# Zero install, always isolated — recommended for manual use
uvx openresearch-mcp

# Or install globally
pip install openresearch-mcp
openresearch-mcp

By default the server starts on http://127.0.0.1:8000/mcp (Streamable HTTP, MCP 1.1+) — bound to loopback so it is not exposed to your local network. To expose it (e.g. in a container or behind a gateway), bind all interfaces explicitly:

# Custom port
uvx openresearch-mcp --port 9000

# Bind all interfaces (only behind an auth/rate-limit gateway)
uvx openresearch-mcp --host 0.0.0.0 --port 9000

Note: when binding beyond loopback, put an auth/rate-limit gateway in front. The server is zero-auth by design, and read_url/read_pdf fetch arbitrary URLs (private/link-local/loopback ranges are blocked to prevent SSRF, but rate limiting is your responsibility).

Update

# uvx
uvx --refresh openresearch-mcp

# pip
pip install --upgrade openresearch-mcp

Connect to an MCP client

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
(Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openresearch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["openresearch-mcp", "--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop after saving. The server runs in stdio mode — no port needed.

Cursor

Create or edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (per-project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openresearch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["openresearch-mcp", "--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

HTTP agents (OpenCode, Open WebUI, custom)

Start the server:

uvx openresearch-mcp
# or: openresearch-mcp

Point your agent at:

http://localhost:8000/mcp

Optional env vars

All tools work without any keys. Set these to increase rate limits:

Variable	Effect
GITHUB_TOKEN	GitHub: 60 → 5,000 req/hr
OPENALEX_EMAIL	OpenAlex polite pool (higher limits)
STACKEXCHANGE_KEY	Stack Overflow: higher daily quota
SEC_USER_AGENT	Your contact (e.g. email) for SEC EDGAR fair-access; a default is used otherwise

Example with keys:

GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_... OPENALEX_EMAIL=[e-mail] uvx openresearch-mcp

Or in Claude Desktop config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openresearch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["openresearch-mcp", "--stdio"],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_TOKEN": "ghp_...",
        "OPENALEX_EMAIL": "[e-mail]"
      }
    }
  }
}

Health check

When running in HTTP mode, check which sources are reachable:

curl http://localhost:8000/health

{
  "status": "ok",
  "sources": {
    "duckduckgo":    { "status": "ok", "latency_ms": 173 },
    "github":        { "status": "ok", "latency_ms": 101 },
    "hacker_news":   { "status": "ok", "latency_ms": 308 },
    "stackoverflow": { "status": "ok", "latency_ms": 247 },
    "openalex":      { "status": "ok", "latency_ms": 412 },
    "youtube":       { "status": "ok", "latency_ms": 320 }
  }
}

status is "ok", "degraded" (some sources down), or "down" (all unreachable). HTTP 200 / 503.

Known limitations

• Reddit / Zenodo: block unauthenticated scraping — not included
• YouTube: rate-limited at scale; works well for personal/low-volume use
• Weather (Open-Meteo): data is licensed CC BY 4.0 and free for non-commercial use up to ~10,000 requests/day. Commercial use requires Open-Meteo's paid plan or self-hosting — embedding get_weather_forecast in a commercial product without one inherits a license obligation. Attribution to Open-Meteo is required.
• PDF parsing: read_pdf parses untrusted PDFs in-process (with download-size and page caps). Fine for personal/low-volume use; a public high-volume deployment should isolate parsing in a subprocess with CPU/memory limits.

Roadmap

• Reddit OAuth (browser-based, no user key management)
• GitHub Device Flow login
• PubMed / NCBI (optional key)
• NewsAPI support (optional key)

Security

openresearch-mcp was reviewed and hardened using agent-security-skill, an OWASP-aligned AI agent security review skill developed by the maintainer.

That review directly led to concrete hardening in this server: SSRF-resistant URL fetching, untrusted-content framing for tool outputs, bounded downloads, pinned GitHub Actions, dependency major-version caps, and regression tests for security-sensitive behavior.

See the hardening notes and current security posture in SECURITY.md.

License

Apache 2.0