Universal VibeT Search MCP

Free multi-engine web search MCP server — no API keys required.

Built with FastMCP and ddgs.

Acknowledgment: The multi-engine search logic is based on the web_search tool from Vibe-Trading (MIT License) — an open-source AI trading research workspace by HKUDS.

Features

• Zero API keys — queries DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, Brave, Mojeek, Yahoo directly
• Retry with backoff — 3 attempts with exponential backoff for transient failures
• News search — dedicated tool for recent news results
• Lightweight — single file, minimal dependencies

Quick Start

Install

pip install universal-vibet-search-mcp

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/hdworker/universal-vibet-search-mcp.git
cd universal-vibet-search-mcp
pip install -e .

Run as MCP Server

universal-vibet-search-mcp

Or directly:

python -m universal_vibet_search_mcp.server

Add to Claude Desktop / OpenCode / Cursor

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-search": {
      "command": "universal-vibet-search-mcp",
      "transport": "stdio"
    }
  }
}

Or with Python module:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-search": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "universal_vibet_search_mcp.server"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/universal-vibet-search-mcp",
      "transport": "stdio"
    }
  }
}

Tools

web_search

Search the web across free engines.

Parameters:

Returns: JSON with status, query, and results array.

web_search_news

Search recent news across free engines.

Parameters:

Returns: JSON with status, query, and results array (includes date and source).

Example Output

User query
    │
    ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ddgs (DuckDuckGo Search library)       │
│                                         │
│  Queries multiple search engines        │
│  (DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing, etc.)       │
│                                         │
│  If rate-limited → retry (3x)           │
│  If transient error → exponential backoff
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
    │
    ▼
  JSON results

The ddgs library is a metasearch aggregator that queries multiple search engines without requiring API keys. It works by scraping public search results pages.

Example Output

{
  "status": "ok",
  "query": "Python MCP server tutorial",
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Building an MCP Server with FastMCP",
      "url": "https://example.com/fastmcp-tutorial",
      "snippet": "Learn how to build a Model Context Protocol server..."
    }
  ]
}

Limitations

• Rate limits — Free engines rate-limit aggressively from cloud/shared IPs (~100 req/hour per engine). The multi-engine fallback mitigates this.
• No guaranteed uptime — Engines may change their scraping targets.
• CAPTCHA — Occasionally engines may present CAPTCHAs; the retry logic handles most transient cases.

Credits

• Vibe-Trading (MIT License) — Original multi-engine search implementation by HKUDS at HKU
• ddgs — DuckDuckGo Search library
• FastMCP — FastMCP framework for building MCP servers

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.