🔍 web-search-plus-mcp

Give your AI app better web search and clean page reading. web-search-plus-mcp works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, NanoBot, Hermes, and other MCP apps. It searches across the services you choose, returns the original sources, and can try another service when one fails.

web-search-plus-mcp 3.5.0 brings the Web Search Plus v3.5.0 engine to MCP apps without changing its two tools.

🚀 Quick Start

# Run it without installing anything
uvx web-search-plus-mcp

# Or install it normally
pip install web-search-plus-mcp
web-search-plus-mcp

Add at least one search provider. You can start with one and add more later.

✨ What it does

• 15 search providers — use one service or let Web Search Plus choose
• 9 page-reading providers — turn web pages into clean text
• Automatic fallback — try another provider when the first one fails
• Real sources — keep the links and text the result came from
• Research mode — search several providers for broader questions
• Optional details — see which provider ran and how the result was found
• Simple setup tools — check your config and create a starter setup
• Optional local search — connect a separately installed Hound service

Version 3.5.0 migrates the stdio boundary to MCP Python SDK v2, negotiates the stateless 2026-07-28 protocol for modern clients while retaining 2025-11-25 compatibility, and ports the optional Hound bridge. See the 3.5.0 release notes for setup, compatibility, security boundaries, and migration details.

🧭 Easier onboarding

Check configured providers:

web-search-plus-mcp status

List providers or presets:

web-search-plus-mcp list providers
web-search-plus-mcp list presets

Write a starter .env template and print a canonical MCP stdio snippet:

web-search-plus-mcp setup --preset starter

The recommended starter preset is You.com + Serper + Linkup. It gives a practical source-only baseline for fast current search, Google-style discovery, and extraction workflows without wiring every provider on day one.

status returns a non-zero exit code when no search provider is configured, which makes it usable as a config check in scripts.

Persistent routing preferences live in config.json rather than .env:

web-search-plus-mcp config show
web-search-plus-mcp config set-default you        # strict fixed-provider mode
web-search-plus-mcp config set-routing on         # restore auto-routing
web-search-plus-mcp config set-priority you,serper,exa,firecrawl,tavily,linkup,parallel,brave,keenable
web-search-plus-mcp config set-extract-priority serper,tavily,exa,linkup,parallel,firecrawl,you,keenable
web-search-plus-mcp config set-fallback serper
web-search-plus-mcp config disable parallel
web-search-plus-mcp config enable parallel
web-search-plus-mcp config set-auto-allow parallel on
web-search-plus-mcp config set-threshold 0.45
web-search-plus-mcp config reset --yes

Use --config-path /path/to/config.json or WEB_SEARCH_PLUS_CONFIG=/path/to/config.json for isolated MCP host installs. Provider secrets stay in environment variables; routing behavior stays in config.json. Search and extraction priorities are independent. If an extraction priority lists only selected providers, the remaining extract-capable providers are appended in the public registry order.

Other presets:

• minimal — You.com only
• lean — You.com + Linkup
• starter — You.com + Serper + Linkup
• all — every supported provider env var

⚙️ MCP host config

Canonical stdio snippet for Claude Desktop, Cursor, NanoBot, or Hermes native MCP:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-search-plus": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["web-search-plus-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "YOU_API_KEY": "your_you_key",
        "SERPER_API_KEY": "your_serper_key",
        "LINKUP_API_KEY": "your_linkup_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Common places to paste this snippet:

• Claude Desktop macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Claude Desktop Windows: %APPDATA%\\Claude\\claude_desktop_config.json
• Claude Desktop Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Cursor: project/user MCP config using the same mcpServers shape
• Hermes native MCP: ~/.hermes/config.yaml under mcp_servers with equivalent command/env fields

You can also place a .env file next to the package/project with the same variables.

🔌 MCP protocol compatibility

The server uses MCP Python SDK v2 and keeps the stdio boundary dual-era compatible:

• modern clients negotiate the stateless MCP 2026-07-28 protocol through server/discover
• legacy handshake clients continue to negotiate MCP 2025-11-25

The package exposes stdio only; the specification's Streamable HTTP session removal, subscriptions, OAuth changes, tasks, and multi-round-trip requests do not alter the two-tool Web Search Plus surface. Both protocol paths are covered by real subprocess tests.

🔎 Search Providers

• You.com — fast source-result provider for current and multilingual search
• Serper — Google-style facts, news, shopping, local queries
• Exa — semantic discovery, GitHub/docs, arXiv/academic, and OSS discovery
• Firecrawl — web search plus scrape-ready content
• Parallel — explicit-only LLM-ready web search with long excerpts (PARALLEL_API_KEY, auto_allow=false)
• Tavily — research and analysis
• Linkup — source-backed grounding/citations
• Brave — explicit-only independent web index by default (BRAVE_API_KEY, auto_allow=false)
• SearXNG — privacy-first self-hosted meta-search
• SerpBase — explicit-only Google SERP API (SERPBASE_API_KEY, auto_allow=false)
• Querit — explicit-only multilingual, real-time AI search (QUERIT_API_KEY, auto_allow=false)
• Keenable — independent web index with search and extraction (KEENABLE_API_KEY, or opt-in keyless public tier; off by default)
• Hound — explicit-only local keyless metasearch through a separately installed loopback MCP sidecar (HOUND_MCP_URL)
• Octen via Monid — explicit-only source-result web search with native recency and domain filters (MONID_API_KEY, auto_allow=false)
• TinyFish — explicit-only BYOK source-result search (TINYFISH_API_KEY, auto_allow=false)

Octen source search via Monid

The adapter executes Octen's /search endpoint through Monid's documented HTTP API for ranked links and highlights. It explicitly disables full-content retrieval and does not call Octen's answer or Broad Search APIs. Configure MONID_API_KEY from Monid, then select provider="octen"; automatic routing remains unchanged unless you deliberately enable auto_allow. Access and billing use Monid's prepaid wallet; see Monid for current pricing and terms.

TinyFish source search

Configure your own TINYFISH_API_KEY and select provider="tinyfish"; TinyFish remains outside automatic routing and fallback. Web Search Plus MCP does not provide, pool, proxy, or share TinyFish credentials. Review the TinyFish Search API reference and TinyFish Terms before use: the published Terms grant broad rights over Customer Data, including queries, for analysis, training, fine-tuning, evaluation, and model improvement. This integration therefore treats TinyFish as high risk and makes no no-training claim.

📄 Extract Providers

• Tavily — public default first choice; fastest reliable extraction in the v2.1 benchmark
• Exa — fast contents API, strong for docs/academic pages
• Linkup — clean markdown and source-grounded fetches
• Parallel — docs-focused fallback with full-content defaults of 60k characters per result / 120k total
• Firecrawl — robust scrape fallback, useful for JS-heavy/blocked pages
• You.com — LLM-ready snippets/content where available
• Keenable — keyed or explicitly opted-in public extraction
• Serper — fast webpage scraper extraction
• Hound — explicit-only local fetch, browser rendering, PDF, and OCR fallback through MCP

auto_routing.extract_provider_priority can override the auto-extraction order without changing search routing. Explicit provider calls still try the requested provider first.

Keenable keyless public access

Keenable exposes authenticated endpoints via KEENABLE_API_KEY. It also has keyless /public endpoints, but those are opt-in and disabled by default. Without a key, Keenable is treated as unconfigured unless you explicitly enable public egress:

{ "keenable": { "allow_public": true } }

or set:

KEENABLE_ALLOW_PUBLIC=1

Use an API key for private or production use. The public endpoint sends queries and fetched URLs to a shared unauthenticated service and remains near the tail of the public default fallback order unless the operator configures a different extraction priority.

Hound local keyless sidecar

Hound / Master Fetch is an independent MIT-licensed project created and maintained by Bishesh Bhandari (dondai1234). It is not bundled with this package. Web Search Plus connects to a separately installed Hound service through an uncredentialed loopback-only MCP endpoint.

Hound avoids commercial search API credentials, but uses local resources and public network egress; engines may throttle or change behavior, browser-backed fetches can be slow, and no SLA is implied. Hound therefore remains explicit-only unless the operator enables auto_allow.

See the Hound setup and security guide for installation, configuration, trade-offs, and tested versions.

Private/internal extraction target guard

web_extract blocks user-supplied target URLs that point at private or internal networks before any provider is called. This covers loopback, RFC1918, CGNAT/shared-address ranges, IPv6 local/mapped-private ranges, multicast, cloud metadata hosts, and hostnames resolving to private/internal IPs.

Operator-configured provider endpoints are separate: local Firecrawl-compatible backends can still run on 127.0.0.1 through provider config. If you intentionally need to extract trusted intranet URLs, opt in explicitly:

{ "extract": { "allow_private_urls": true } }

Leave this off for public/agent-controlled URL extraction.

GroktoCrawl / local Firecrawl-compatible backends

The Firecrawl provider can target a local Firecrawl-v2-compatible backend by overriding its search and scrape URLs in config.json. For example, a local GroktoCrawl instance listening on 127.0.0.1:8080 can be used without adding a separate provider:

{
  "firecrawl": {
    "api_url": "http://127.0.0.1:8080/v2/search",
    "scrape_url": "http://127.0.0.1:8080/v2/scrape"
  }
}

Keep FIRECRAWL_API_KEY configured if your backend enforces bearer authentication; local development instances may ignore the header. This does not make GroktoCrawl the default and does not claim coverage for every Firecrawl endpoint.

🛠 MCP Tool Reference

This MCP server exposes exactly two stable, source-only tools: web_search and web_extract. Use web_search for source discovery and let the MCP host synthesize from those sources when needed; the server itself does not generate answers or truth claims.

The Hermes plugin exposes the same stable capability as web_search_plus and web_extract_plus; the names differ because MCP and Hermes use different tool surfaces.

web_search

Use for source discovery, current events, prices, weather, sports lineups, schedules, and whenever you want the raw search landscape first.

Parameters:

• query — required search query
• provider — auto, serper, serpbase, brave, tavily, querit, linkup, exa, firecrawl, parallel, you, searxng, keenable, hound, octen, tinyfish
• count — results to return, default 5, max 20
• depth — Exa depth: normal, deep, deep-reasoning
• time_range — hour, day, week, month, year
• freshness — unified day, week, month, or year recency request
• search_type — search or Serper-native news
• country / language — explicit locale overrides
• include_domains / exclude_domains — domain allow/deny lists
• mode — normal or research
• quality_report — include routing/result diagnostics
• research_time_budget — best-effort wall-clock budget for research mode

Example MCP arguments:

{
  "query": "latest AI hardware news",
  "provider": "auto",
  "count": 5,
  "quality_report": true
}

web_extract

Parameters:

• urls — required list of URLs
• provider — auto, tavily, exa, linkup, parallel, firecrawl, you, keenable, serper, hound
• format — markdown or html
• include_images — include image metadata when supported
• include_raw_html — include raw HTML when supported
• render_js — render JavaScript before extraction when supported
• spans — select deterministic semantic spans from extracted text
• spans_query — optional query used to rank semantic spans

Example MCP arguments:

{
  "urls": ["https://example.com"],
  "provider": "auto",
  "format": "markdown"
}

🧠 Classic Routing v2 examples

• 東京 AI ニュース 今日 → You.com multilingual/current search
• arXiv 2024 LLM scaling laws → Exa academic discovery
• CVE-2025 openssl advisory → Serper security/current search
• best bookshelf speakers under 1000 EUR Austria → Serper/Firecrawl shopping/local search
• open source alternatives to Linear → Exa/Firecrawl OSS discovery
• recent RAG vs fine-tuning benchmark sources → source-result discovery; the MCP host may synthesize from returned sources

Guarded providers can still be called explicitly. To let one participate in provider="auto", opt in:

web-search-plus-mcp config set-auto-allow parallel on
web-search-plus-mcp config set-auto-allow parallel off
web-search-plus-mcp config set-auto-allow hound on
web-search-plus-mcp config set-auto-allow hound off

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for project boundaries, portable-engine sync rules, provider requirements, security constraints, and pull-request expectations.

Run the same gates as CI:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip build
python -m pip install -e ".[test]"
python -m pytest tests/ -q -p no:cacheprovider
ruff check --config pyproject.toml .
python -m compileall -q web_search_plus_mcp tests
python scripts/gen_contract_v3_schemas.py --check
python -m build

The GitHub Actions workflow runs the test suite on Python 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12, then verifies Ruff, byte-compilation, wheel creation, source-distribution creation, and wheel/sdist parity.

Credits

Built on the Web Search Plus routing engine and packaged as a standalone MCP server.

License

MIT © 2026 robbyczgw-cla