SearchFetch

An MCP server that gives AI agents web search and page fetching through a stealth browser. Pages are rendered with JavaScript, stripped of noise, and returned as compact Markdown.

• Browser rendering: CloakBrowser runs Chromium with humanized input. Each fetch uses an isolated browser context. Sites may still demand logins or challenges.
• Fault tolerance: relaunches a disconnected browser and retries timeouts, network failures and HTTP 429 (honoring Retry-After, capped at 30 s) once. Built-in search engines fall back to DuckDuckGo HTML and then DuckDuckGo Lite.
• Token-efficient output: scripts, styles, SVGs, inline styles and embedded data: images are removed before conversion; images, media and fonts are blocked at the network layer.
• Template-driven extraction: JSON templates for GitHub, GitLab, npm, PyPI, crates.io, docs.rs, Docker Hub, Wikipedia, MDN, Reddit, YouTube, DEV, pkg.go.dev, Javadoc and generic documentation sites. Custom templates can be passed inline.
• Two runtimes: Python (uvx, Python 3.11.5+) or Node.js (npx, Node 24+), with the same tools, templates and output. The first run downloads the browser binary.

Setup

No manual install is needed. Point your MCP client at uvx or npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searchfetch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["searchfetch"]
    }
  }
}

For Node.js, use "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "searchfetch"]. In Cursor, add a command server with uvx searchfetch or npx -y searchfetch.

Tools

Both tools are read-only. Failures are returned as MCP tool errors.

websearch

Results are a numbered list of titles, URLs and snippets. When an engine fails or returns no results, the next template in its fallback chain is tried (google → duckduckgo-search → duckduckgo-lite-search), and a [websearch: …] note at the top of the output explains why.

webfetch

Output ends with a footer naming the template and the character window, plus the next start_index when more content remains. Pages that match no template are converted whole after removing navigation, headers, footers, sidebars, dialogs and media (template="auto (fallback)"). The raw template converts the full <body> with no removal.

Templates

Built-in templates live in templates/ and are shared by both runtimes. Page templates: github-repo, github-issue, npm-package, pypi-package, crates-package, docs-rs, javadoc, docs-page, docker-hub, wikipedia, gitlab, reddit, mdn-web-docs, devto, go-pkg, youtube, raw. Search templates: google-search, duckduckgo-search, duckduckgo-lite-search.

Templates are validated when they are loaded or passed inline:

Each section has a name, a selector (empty selects <body>), and optionally format (text, markdown, attribute with attribute, or html), transform (one or a list of strip, decode_google_url, decode_ddg_url, json_parse, resolve_href), required, multiple, max_items, and children (fields extracted from inside each matched element).

Selectors separated by top-level commas are ordered fallbacks: the first selector that matches wins, and an empty fallback selects the current element. Children search inside their parent element and its ancestors, never neighbouring results, so a missing field stays missing. Missing required sections or fields are reported as errors.

A records section whose first item has Author/User and Comment/Body fields is rendered as a comment thread; other records render as indented Key: value blocks.

Development

npm ci && uv sync --locked --extra dev
git config core.hooksPath .githooks   # optional: format, lint and unit tests before commits

npm test               # Node (node:test) and Python (pytest) unit tests
npm run lint           # ESLint and Ruff
npm run format         # Prettier and Ruff format (format:check to verify)
npm run e2e            # real browser against local fixtures, plus the packed npm and wheel builds
npm run check          # everything CI runs
npm run inspect:node   # MCP Inspector (inspect:py for Python)

Layout

The runtimes mirror each other module for module (templates, extract, markdown, compose, browser, server). Any change to one should be made to the other, with a shared fixture if the behavior is observable.

Limits

• HTML-to-Markdown conversion uses turndown (Node) and markdownify (Python). They agree on common content, but edge cases such as tables differ.
• After the DOM is ready, each fetch waits up to five seconds for network activity to settle. Pages that keep rendering after that may return partial content.
• E2E tests use local fixtures. Live search-engine availability and third-party page layouts change over time and need separate live checks.