Crawl4AI RAG MCP Server

A powerful implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrated with Crawl4AI and Supabase for providing AI agents and AI coding assistants with advanced web crawling and RAG capabilities.

With this MCP server, you can scrape anything and then use that knowledge anywhere for RAG.

Overview

This MCP server provides tools that enable AI agents to crawl websites, store content in a vector database (Supabase), and perform RAG over the crawled content.

Features

• Smart URL Detection: Automatically detects and handles different URL types (regular webpages, sitemaps, text files)

• Recursive Crawling: Follows internal links to discover content

• Parallel Processing: Efficiently crawls multiple pages simultaneously

• Content Chunking: Intelligently splits content by headers and size for better processing

• Vector Search: Performs RAG over crawled content, optionally filtering by data source for precision

• Source Retrieval: Retrieve sources available for filtering to guide the RAG process

Tools

The server provides four essential web crawling and search tools:

1. crawl_single_page: Quickly crawl a single web page and store its content in the vector database

2. smart_crawl_url: Intelligently crawl a full website based on the type of URL provided (sitemap, llms-full.txt, or a regular webpage that needs to be crawled recursively)

3. get_available_sources: Get a list of all available sources (domains) in the database

4. perform_rag_query: Search for relevant content using semantic search with optional source filtering

Prerequisites

• Docker/Docker Desktop if running the MCP server as a container (recommended)

• Python 3.12+ if running the MCP server directly through uv

• Supabase (database for RAG)

• OpenAI API key (for generating embeddings)

Installation

Using Docker (Recommended)

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/coleam00/mcp-crawl4ai-rag.git
   cd mcp-crawl4ai-rag

2. Build the Docker image:

   docker build -t mcp/crawl4ai-rag --build-arg PORT=8051 .

3. Create a .env file based on the configuration section below

Using uv directly (no Docker)

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/coleam00/mcp-crawl4ai-rag.git
   cd mcp-crawl4ai-rag

2. Install uv if you don't have it:

   pip install uv

3. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   uv venv
   .venv\Scripts\activate
   # on Mac/Linux: source .venv/bin/activate

4. Install dependencies:

   uv pip install -e .
   crawl4ai-setup

5. Create a .env file based on the configuration section below

Running Supabase Locally with Docker (optional)

To run Supabase locally using Docker, follow these steps:

1. Get the Supabase code:

   git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/supabase/supabase

2. Create your new Supabase project directory:

   mkdir supabase-project

3. Copy the compose files to your project:

   cp -rf supabase/docker/* supabase-project

4. Copy the fake environment variables:

   cp supabase/docker/.env.example supabase-project/.env

5. Switch to your project directory:

   cd supabase-project

6. Pull the latest images:

   docker compose pull

7. Start the services (in detached mode):

   docker compose up -d

After starting Supabase locally, ensure you configure your .env file in this project with the correct SUPABASE_URL and SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY pointing to your local Supabase instance. Typically, for a local setup, these would be:

Database Setup

Before running the server, you need to set up the database with the pgvector extension:

1. Go to the SQL Editor in your Supabase dashboard (create a new project first if necessary)

2. Create a new query and paste the contents of crawled_pages.sql

3. Run the query to create the necessary tables and functions

Configuration

Create a .env file in the project root with the following variables:

# MCP Server Configuration
HOST=0.0.0.0
PORT=8051
TRANSPORT=sse

# OpenAI API Configuration
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key

# Supabase Configuration
SUPABASE_URL=your_supabase_project_url
SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY=your_supabase_service_key

#local supbase config
SUPABASE_URL=your_local_supbase_url
SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY=yuut_local_supbase_service_key

Running the Server

Using Docker

docker run --env-file .env -p 8051:8051 mcp/crawl4ai-rag

Using Python

uv run src/crawl4ai_mcp.py

The server will start and listen on the configured host and port.

Integration with MCP Clients

SSE Configuration

Once you have the server running with SSE transport, you can connect to it using this configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crawl4ai-rag": {
      "transport": "sse",
      "url": "http://localhost:8051/sse"
    }
  }
}

Note for Windsurf users: Use serverUrl instead of url in your configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crawl4ai-rag": {
      "transport": "sse",
      "serverUrl": "http://localhost:8051/sse"
    }
  }
}

Note for Docker users: Use host.docker.internal instead of localhost if your client is running in a different container. This will apply if you are using this MCP server within n8n!

Stdio Configuration

Add this server to your MCP configuration for Claude Desktop, Windsurf, or any other MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crawl4ai-rag": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["path/to/crawl4ai-mcp/src/crawl4ai_mcp.py"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "OPENAI_API_KEY": "your_openai_api_key",
        "SUPABASE_URL": "your_supabase_url",
        "SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY": "your_supabase_service_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Docker with Stdio Configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crawl4ai-rag": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "--rm", "-i", 
               "-e", "TRANSPORT", 
               "-e", "OPENAI_API_KEY", 
               "-e", "SUPABASE_URL", 
               "-e", "SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY", 
               "mcp/crawl4ai"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "OPENAI_API_KEY": "your_openai_api_key",
        "SUPABASE_URL": "your_supabase_url",
        "SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY": "your_supabase_service_key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Building Your Own Server

This implementation provides a foundation for building more complex MCP servers with web crawling capabilities. To build your own:

1. Add your own tools by creating methods with the @mcp.tool() decorator

2. Create your own lifespan function to add your own dependencies

3. Modify the utils.py file for any helper functions you need

4. Extend the crawling capabilities by adding more specialized crawlers