Infobroker

One server. Every source. Research that delivers.

Infobroker is a multi-provider MCP server that unifies web search, structured knowledge, academic, archive, and content-extraction APIs behind a single tool surface. Twenty-one zero-config providers ship in the box — search the web, look up facts, fetch articles — with nothing to configure. Five more providers unlock with API keys or self-hosting. A built-in corroboration engine cross-references independent sources to separate established facts from contested claims. Bundled client skills transform raw research into polished writing. Free first. Privacy always.

• North Star

• Quick Start

• MCP Server

• Skills

• Providers

• Configuration

• How It Compares

• Contribute

• License

• Spec

North Star

Infobroker is the Bothan Spynet as a tool — a decentralized intelligence network that queries independent sources and routes results through a single, impartial interface. In intelligence-cycle terms, you supply the direction and get the dissemination; the server handles the collection and processing.

Related MCP server: MCP Info Gatherer

Quick Start

npx -y infobroker

The npm package ships its default configuration. The server resolves it from the installed package, so no environment variable is required. Your own overrides live at ~/.config/infobroker/config.local.json, or at a path set by INFOBROKER_CONFIG_LOCAL.

To run from a clone instead:

cd Infobroker && npm install && npm run start

Add this to your OpenCode config (~/.config/opencode/opencode.json):

{
  "instructions": [
    "<path-to-Infobroker>/instructions/search-preferences.md"
  ],
  "skills": {
    "paths": [
      "<path-to-Infobroker>/skills",
      "<path-to-opencode-config>/skills"
    ]
  },
  "mcp": {
    "infobroker": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": ["node_modules/.bin/tsx", "src/index.ts"],
      "cwd": "<path-to-Infobroker>",
      "environment": {
        "INFOBROKER_CONFIG": "<path-to-Infobroker>/config.json"
      }
    }
  }
}

For an npm install, point instructions and skills.paths at node_modules/infobroker/... and use ["npx", "-y", "infobroker"] as the command. On Windows, quote paths containing backslashes.

The mcp block starts the server; the instructions and skills blocks are what activate the bundled client skills. Without them the skills ship with the package but stay inert.

Free providers work immediately. API-keyed providers — Brave, Exa, Tavily, Yep — unlock higher throughput and specialized search; self-hosted SearXNG gives full query privacy:

export INFOBROKER_BRAVE_API_KEY="your-key"
export INFOBROKER_EXA_API_KEY="your-key"

Requirements: Node.js 24+.

MCP Server

Your research backend. Seven tools, twenty-six providers, one corroboration engine. The complete feature inventory is documented in the feature taxonomy in the spec.

Unified Search

"Search for the location of the second Death Star." "Find scholarly papers on hyperspace travel theories." "Search the latest astromech specs and show me the passages that answer: does the R2 unit pre-date the Clone Wars?"

search_web sends one query to every provider that can answer it. Search across DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, academic databases, news, code repositories — or describe your task and the server picks the best source. Common operators (site:, filetype:, quoted phrases) pass through to engines that support them, a preferred language is honored where a provider allows it, and anything the serving provider drops is reported rather than hidden. Pass an array of queries to batch several searches in one call. Ask for a deep read and it fetches the top results, then ranks each page's passages against your query, so you get the specific text that answers the question instead of links. Pass analyze: true and the same response carries topic terms, entity mentions, semantic clusters, and a dated timeline derived from those results — computed in-process, with no extra request. Failed providers fall back silently through a configurable chain so you get results, not error messages. Other search tools lock you to one engine; Infobroker routes every query to the right provider and keeps going when one fails.

Content Extraction

"Fetch the article on the Battle of Yavin and summarize it." "Get the text of that page about the Death Star plans." "Where, in that report, does it mention the reactor core?"

fetch_page hands any URL to Jina Reader, which renders it as clean Markdown optimized for LLM consumption. It falls back to native HTTP when Jina is throttled. Wikipedia and Internet Archive have dedicated renderers for source-specific extraction. Ask a page a question — pass question to fetch_page and it returns the passages that answer it, each scored and ranked, instead of the whole document. Built-in web fetchers return raw HTML; Infobroker gives you clean, readable content from any source — ready for summarization or analysis. Fetch also reports the page's last-updated date when it can determine one, so you know how current your source is.

Citations

"Give me BibTeX references for papers on hyperdrive field dynamics." "Cite the paper that first described the hyperdrive field equations."

get_citations searches scholarly sources and returns each reference as a formatted BibTeX entry with its fields — title, authors, year, venue, and URL — ready to paste into a reference list.

Provider Intelligence

"Which source should I use to research the Death Star's weakness?" "Show me all available sources and their quota status."

The server knows its own capabilities. search_web auto-selects the best backend for your task, weighing capability, quota, and latency — or routes by your intent when you ask for privacy, speed, or free-only sources. inspect_providers surfaces every configured source, reports its derived privacy posture, and drills into a single provider's uptime and error history. The generated skills/infobroker/references/provider-privacy.md documents query forwarding, retention, account requirements, and resale for every provider, marking what configuration cannot establish as unknown rather than assuming privacy. No other search MCP server gives you operational visibility into every backend.

Multi-Source Verification

"Verify whether the Empire really destroyed Alderaan." "Find the consensus on who fired first — Han or Greedo."

verify_claims runs a multi-pass truth-finding loop: broad search across your highest-authority providers — search engines, encyclopedias, and scholarly indexes — then claim extraction, cross-source reconciliation, and targeted follow-up for gaps, dispatched in parallel and stopping early once the truth is pinned down. Claims corroborated across independent sources score high confidence, weighted by each source's authority; every source is bound to the claim it supports. Republished wire copy and mirrors are collapsed into one source family, so confidence counts origins, not hosts, and a secondary-only finding is capped rather than overstated. Contradictions are surfaced with all perspectives. Gaps trigger refined queries that broaden to the rest of your providers. It also remembers: prior findings in your knowledge base participate as corroborating sources before it queries the network. You get a structured report — confirmed, contested, and unverified findings — with source provenance, per-source claims, and confidence scores. Every other search tool returns a list of links; Infobroker finds the truth and tells you how sure it is.

Knowledge Base

"Search what you already found about the Rebel Alliance fleet." "Ingest this article so it's cached for next time."

Every search, fetch, and corroboration run is cached locally. manage_kb checks the cache before hitting external providers, falling back to the network only when the cached results aren't fresh enough or relevant enough. Its actions ingest text or a URL by hand, report what's cached, and remove content. Content is age-scored, expired on a freshness schedule, and deduplicated by source. Retrieval runs on your machine with a configurable embedding model; your content is never sent to a third party. Beyond the cache, manage_kb archives the reports you generate: ingest with source_type: "report" (and default to the knowledge base) and revisit them with manage_kb list and manage_kb get, or write them to a local directory instead.

Corroboration results are also kept as claim records. Each verify_claims run stores one ledger entry per finding, linked to the sources that supported it with the time each source was retrieved, and re-verifying a claim updates that entry in place instead of adding a duplicate. Cited sources are copied into the knowledge base as retrievable, hashed snapshots, so a report can be rechecked after the live page changes. Each snapshot reports its basis — fetched document or supplied snippet — and whether it was truncated. Read them with manage_kb action=claims, optionally filtered by query (claim text) or source_url, newest first and capped by max_results (default 8, max 50). The ledger is sealed at rest when encryption is on.

A watchlist runner records due-topic claim deltas; cron owns the schedule. A report can also carry a verification receipt. Ingest it with a receipt of claims and cited sources; the server hashes the stored report and every cached source. verify_report rechecks it offline — no network call — and reports drift when the report or a source changed, unverifiable for an uncached source, and a digest mismatch for a tampered manifest. The manifest can also carry report metadata and a revision chain; verify_report reports age and staleness alongside drift, so monitoring can baseline a report, revalidate it, and publish a delta revision. The manifest is sealed at rest, and encryption transitions reseal it.

Research Pipeline

"Research the construction of the Death Star, then draft a summary." "Fact-check these claims about Darth Vader's origin."

Infobroker doesn't stop at search results. Bundled client skills chain its tools into writing pipelines, routing every request through a solved workflow shape and the writing sub-skills until a finished document comes out the other end. Everything lives in the repository — no external paths or separate install. The full pipeline — the six skills, the workflow shapes, and the escalation path — is detailed in the Skills section. Other search MCP servers produce search results; Infobroker produces finished work.

Operational Visibility

"Show server health." "Hot-reload my config without restarting."

Quota counters persist to disk and survive restarts. Rate limits are enforced per-provider, not globally. Configuration is hot-reloadable via reload_config — change providers, adjust chains, or tweak thresholds without dropping connections, or pass a patch to merge a change into your user layer with a backup. search_web doubles as DuckDuckGo query autocomplete. inspect_providers reports the server's build health, request stats, and local state health — configuration drift, pending migrations, backend capabilities, and update status. When something actionable needs your attention, successful tool responses carry a bounded notices array with the condition and the fix, so a stale user layer does not stay invisible. You always know what your search server is doing and how much capacity remains.

Skills

The MCP server is one half of the product. The bundled skills are the other. Six client skills ship in the repository and turn raw research into finished work.

The orchestrator skill (infobroker) opens with a classify gate that maps your request to a workflow shape: research-and-write, fact-check, deep-dive, competitive evaluation, literature review, monitoring, red-team, vetting, or gated analysis. Each shape composes the same primitives — recall from the knowledge base, search, extract, verify, write, validate, and cite — into its own sequence and ends with a grep-able completion token. Every report carries a machine-readable manifest and a graded Source Register; a validation gate checks its sections, citations, and manifest values before delivery, and a shared reference fixes one confidence, likelihood, and source-grade scale. Four writing sub-skills execute the writing phases: summarization condenses findings before writing, technical-writing drafts reports and docs, proofreading polishes language, and translation produces multilingual output.

The writing pipeline requires a client that loads bundled skills; without skill loading, Infobroker provides tool-level research, not a finished report.

Gated analysis is the escalation shape. When a question is high-stakes or decision-driving, the classify gate routes to the analysis-loop skill — a disciplined path with confidence-scored findings, source-reliability grading, and structured analytic techniques chosen by fit and named with a rationale — rather than the lighter research-and-write route. It shares the same primitives and Infobroker tools but runs its own gated workflow, so you get the rigor without leaving the pipeline.

A single instruction file, search-preferences.md, routes your client toward these tools: the knowledge base first, external providers only when the cache falls short. Wire it and the skills directory into your OpenCode config once — the Quick Start section shows the exact snippet — and every research request follows the pipeline automatically.

Validated reports export as HTML, JSON, or CSV for reading and archiving. Write your own skill into skills/ to add a workflow shape of your own. The pipeline diagram lives in references/pipeline-map.md and the workflow-shape definitions in references/workflows.md. Other search MCP servers return links; Infobroker ships the writers that turn them into documented answers.

Providers

Twenty-six providers. Twenty-one work with zero configuration.

Built-in and free-HTTP providers are active out of the box. Keyed providers enable with an API key. Self-hosted providers point at a server you run yourself:

export INFOBROKER_BRAVE_API_KEY="BSA-..."
export INFOBROKER_SEARXNG_URL="http://localhost:8080"

Then set "enabled": true in config.json for the provider.

Keyed providers also accept an ordered credential pool via INFOBROKER_<NAME>_API_KEYS (comma-separated). Infobroker rotates to the next key when one is rejected or rate-limited, and reports per-key availability through inspect_providers without ever surfacing key material.

SearXNG is the only shipped self-hosted provider, and it is optional through and through. Nothing in the server requires it, and nothing is bundled or installed on its behalf — SearXNG runs as a container you operate, and Infobroker queries its JSON endpoint like any other backend. Leave it disabled (the default) and you lose nothing: the privacy-critical chain still serves via DuckDuckGo and Mojeek. Enable it only when you want full query privacy, in which case only your own SearXNG instance sees your queries.

Configuration

Four environment variables tune a deployment. INFOBROKER_CONFIG overrides the shipped default config (resolved from the installed package when unset), INFOBROKER_CONFIG_LOCAL points at a user config layer, INFOBROKER_<NAME>_API_KEY supplies a keyed provider's credential, and INFOBROKER_<NAME>_URL points at a self-hosted provider.

config.json ships with the package and the repository and holds the defaults: which providers are enabled, their priority in fallback chains, rate limits, corroboration parameters, and the task-to-provider dispatch table. Hot-reloadable via reload_config — edit the file and call the tool, or pass a patch to merge configuration programmatically; changes take effect without a restart.

Your own overrides live in a separate user layer — ~/.config/infobroker/config.local.json by default, or a path you set via INFOBROKER_CONFIG_LOCAL. An existing config.local.json beside the resolved config still wins, so clone deployments keep their current layout. The layer is preserved across updates. Values in the user layer take precedence over the shipped defaults; anything left out falls back to config.json.

config.json carries a schema stamp (config_version). If your user layer was written for an older schema, or holds a key the current schema no longer recognizes, the server reports the drift at startup and in every reload_config response without changing your file. Apply the registered migrations on demand by calling reload_config with migrate true: the server first copies your layer to a timestamped *.bak-* file, then updates it atomically, leaving anything it does not recognize untouched. Set state.auto_migrate_config to true to apply those migrations automatically at startup after the merged result validates; the same backup is written first. If a user layer is invalid, the server starts on shipped defaults, leaves the file untouched, and reports the error instead of refusing to start.

state.update_check (off by default) enables an update-availability check against the published npm package. When enabled, the check runs in the background, caches its result for a day, and never downloads or applies an update. The result appears in inspect_providers action spec and, when a newer release exists, as a notice.

The knowledge base ships empty. Retrieval runs on a configurable in-process embedding model selected by kb.embedding_model. By default, the store writes to a user-scoped path (~/.local/share/infobroker/knowledge-base) outside the repository, so the content you research and cache stays on your machine and is never committed. Each deployed instance accumulates its own store. A legacy vector-store.json store is migrated automatically on first open and preserved as vector-store.json.migrated-<timestamp>; when encryption is enabled the plaintext archive is removed instead. There is no legacy backend to roll back to: recover with a key backup or rekey.

Knowledge base encryption

Research reports and cached pages can be sensitive, and the knowledge base stores them in a SQLite database (plus -wal/-shm sidecars) in your home directory. Enable optional at-rest encryption by adding a kb.encryption block and supplying a key:

{
  "kb": {
    "encryption": { "enabled": true, "key_file": "~/.config/infobroker/kb.key" }
  }
}

The key file (plain, 0600) is the most reliable source across MCP clients and operating systems; INFOBROKER_KB_KEY (a 32-byte key) or INFOBROKER_KB_PASSPHRASE (a passphrase) also work. Generate a key with openssl rand -base64 32. Encryption protects the store and disk-saved reports from anyone who obtains the files without the key — device theft, backup or cloud-sync leaks, other local accounts. It does not protect against a malicious MCP client on the same machine, or malware, which full-disk encryption covers.

Two rules keep this safe. First, encryption is your opt-in: if the key is missing or wrong, the knowledge base locks and reports an error rather than touching your data — so back up the key (a forgotten key or passphrase means the store is unrecoverable by design). Second, the server never writes a partial file: every save is atomic, and an unrecognized or newer store format is never overwritten.

The manage_kb tool's encryption action is the day-to-day surface for this journey, and it never echoes secret material — generate_key and backup return file paths, and rekey reads a key file rather than a raw key.

Enable by generating a key, backing it up, adding the kb.encryption block, and reloading; the store is encrypted in place immediately. Disable by removing the block and reloading; the store is decrypted to plaintext immediately (keep the key available during the transition so the server can read the store to decrypt it). Recover a locked store with status to see the state, verify to confirm a candidate key before committing it, backup to restore a copy of your key file, and rekey to move to a new key without losing content. After re-keying, point kb.encryption.key_file at the new key, reload, then run verify again to confirm the new key opens the store.

infobroker_manage_kb action=encryption operation=generate_key key_file=~/.local/share/infobroker/keys/kb.key
infobroker_manage_kb action=encryption operation=backup    key_file=~/.local/share/infobroker/keys/kb.key.bak
infobroker_reload_config

Tool-surface key operations (generate_key, backup, rekey's target) are confined to the keys directory: kb.keys_dir when configured, else the keys sibling of the knowledge base storage path (~/.local/share/infobroker/keys by default). A path outside that directory is refused. The kb.encryption.key_file configuration value is operator-owned and not subject to the confinement.

Add the kb.encryption block to config.local.json before reloading to enable, or remove it before reloading to disable. When the store is locked, status, verify, and rekey remain reachable so you can recover without first unlocking.

Content policy

Infobroker reads the open web and caches what it retrieves, so retrieved content is assessed against a configurable policy before it is stored (and, in the strictest mode, before it is returned). The policy flags content that matches heuristic categories — prompt-injection instructions, credential phishing, malware/exploit material, and adult content — and can consult an external assessment service when one is configured. It is on by default in flag mode: flagged content is still returned to you for legitimate research, but it is never written to the knowledge base, and every flag is recorded in the audit trail.

{
  "content_policy": {
    "mode": "flag",
    "threshold": 0.2,
    "patterns": { "prompt_injection": ["ignore previous instructions"] }
  }
}

Modes: off disables assessment; flag (default) returns but never stores flagged content; block refuses flagged content to the caller. threshold tunes sensitivity (0–1, default 0.2 — a single match flags). patterns extend or override the built-in categories per category name. external_url_env names an environment variable holding the URL of an external assessor, and external_api_key_env optionally names one holding its bearer key; when the external service is unreachable the built-in assessment applies.

Security-relevant events — refused network targets, policy flags, config reloads, encryption transitions, key operations, and quota exhaustion — are appended to an owner-only audit log at output.audit_log_path (default ~/.local/share/infobroker/audit.log). Per-provider privacy posture is generated from config.json into skills/infobroker/references/provider-privacy.md; the gate fails when that document drifts from configuration.

Bring your own endpoint

Any HTTP search endpoint can become an Infobroker provider without touching the source tree. Declare it in config.local.json as a generic_http provider, then reference it from a dispatch chain:

{
  "providers": {
    "my_search": {
      "tier": "generic_http",
      "capabilities": ["web_search"],
      "enabled": true,
      "priority": 20,
      "endpoint": "https://api.example.com/search",
      "query_param": "q",
      "results_path": "data.items",
      "field_map": { "title": "name", "url": "link", "snippet": "summary" }
    }
  },
  "dispatch": { "general_web": ["my_search", "duckduckgo"] }
}

The server GETs endpoint?query_param=<query>, walks results_path (dot-separated into the response JSON), and maps each result to the common shape using field_map. Add the slug to your config.local.json override and call reload_config to use it immediately.

Per-provider status and provenance

Two optional keys tune per-provider behavior in config.json:

• degraded_latency_ms — a provider whose recent average latency exceeds this many milliseconds is reported degraded by the inspect_providers health action, even while reachable. A global output.degraded_latency_ms acts as the fallback when a provider omits its own.

• resells — set true on aggregator/reseller backends (search engines that surface other publishers' pages, like DuckDuckGo, Brave, or SearXNG). The server reports each result's original_source where the backing API exposes one (e.g. Brave's profile name); first-party sources (Wikipedia, arXiv) leave it empty because the page is the origin.

Hedged fallback

search_web and fetch_page fall back with a hedge instead of waiting out a slow provider's full timeout: the primary (first-choice) provider runs alone for a latency-derived window, then the remaining providers race and the first result wins. The common path uses one provider call; the hedge fires only when the primary is slow or failing. fetch_page additionally prefers the primary renderer in a short grace window so a marginally slow jina is not displaced by a lower-quality native_fetch. A renderer whose content is an anti-bot challenge page (a CAPTCHA or verification interstitial rather than the target page) is treated as a failed render, so fetch_page falls through to the next renderer instead of serving the challenge as content. Tune the window with output.hedge_enabled, hedge_min_delay_ms, hedge_max_delay_ms, and hedge_grace_ms; set hedge_enabled to false for the sequential chain. A provider that returns a rate-limit or anti-bot response is held in a per-provider cooldown (output.rate_limit_cooldown_ms) so a burst of requests stops re-hammering it, and when a non-general_web chain exhausts, the server retries the general_web chain before failing.

How It Compares

Every other search MCP server asks you to pick a provider and trust it. Infobroker gives you a fleet — and picks the right one for each task. When a provider fails, the next one takes over without you noticing. When a claim matters, the corroboration engine finds agreement, contradiction, and gaps. The bundled skills close the loop from raw research to finished writing. One server. Every source. Research that delivers.

Last updated: 2026-10-28.

Contribute

• Node.js 24+. node --version. Get it at nodejs.org.

• npm install && npm run typecheck

• Bundle your own skill in skills/ to extend the research pipeline.

• Validate README structure: npm run validate-readme

• Versioning: CalVer (YYYY.MM.DD). npm run version-bump stamps today's date into all version references. Pre-commit hooks verify consistency. npm run push checks, tags, and pushes.

• MCP protocol: modelcontextprotocol.io

• Providers: DuckDuckGo · Jina Reader · Wikipedia API

Canonical origin: git.gay/flukeatzerocool/Infobroker. This GitHub repository is a read-only mirror.

License

MIT. Free to use, modify, and redistribute. The bundled client skills and instruction files ship under the same license, so the full research pipeline — server, skills, and documentation — is freely reusable in commercial and open-source work alike. Third-party providers remain subject to their own terms and API keys.

Spec

The server is built from a single source specification, infobroker.md (v2026.10.28), which defines every requirement and the gates that verify it. Each requirement traces to an implementation file, and npm run check reconciles the code, the spec, and this README so what is documented is what the server actually delivers. The routing gate resolves every cited tool and operation against the live schema, and requires each registered tool to be cited at least once.