Groundlane
Allows web search through the Brave Search API as one of the supported search providers.
Click on "Deploy Server".
Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state.
In the chat, type
@followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@Groundlanefetch the Wikipedia page on MCP as markdown"
That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.
Groundlane
The trusted web access layer for AI agents.
Quick start · Connect · Tools · Deploy · Docs
Canonical document provenance uses null for unknown cost or confidence. Provider credits remain separate metadata; they are not converted into currency or reported as zero cost.
The parser engine version is groundlane-bounded-document-v3. Its cache keys exclude earlier engine versions from reuse; upgrading requires no cache migration or manual deletion.
Async document development includes a restartable dispatcher, native D1/R2 composition, durable output write reservations and retryable cancellation/expiry cleanup. Sync and async stored results share {envelope, projection}. This is not a public async API: atomic job-owned source snapshots, source-to-job revocation, scheduler/tool configuration and live acceptance are still required before enablement.
The opt-in edge output profile also links uploaded sources to derived results. Reads revalidate the original source; source deletion or expiry revokes derived access and retains a durable cleanup cursor for retries. These paths have deterministic tests; controlled deployment and client acceptance remain open.
document_parse also accepts an enrolled { "kind": "corpus", "corpusId": "…", "sourceId": "…" } source when CORPUS_STATE_PATH is configured. This parses retained normalized text, enforces current ACL/identity/expiry, and shares cache bindings with corpus update/remove/delete. It does not reprocess the original Office/PDF binary.
The optional DOCUMENT_OUTPUT_EDGE_ENABLED=true profile stores oversized inline/URL/corpus results through a signed private D1/R2 bridge. It requires D1, R2 and the internal signing secret. The bridge enforces a 16 MiB encoded request limit, Worker-owned TTL, bounded chunks and cleanup. The reference flag remains off pending controlled deployment and client acceptance.
Self-hosted document results: set DOCUMENT_ARTIFACT_STATE_PATH to retain oversized inline/URL document_parse output as JSON for 24 hours. Read its outputArtifact.refId with document_result_read in bounded base64 chunks; use document_result_delete to revoke the result and clean up its retained source. Ownership includes tenant and credential binding. Cleanup runs in pages of 100 once per minute; restart resumes cleanup. The MCP inventory also exposes explicit fallback document_job_create, document_job_status, and document_job_cancel tools. Cloudflare execution is fail-closed and remains disabled unless async and output edge flags, the internal signing secret, Reducto credential, primary D1, and R2 are all configured. Controlled Cloudflare output/async acceptance remains pending.
Client evidence: pnpm mcp:clients --client Claude (or Codex / Cursor) probes local executable versions and isolation flags without running a model. See --help for explicit live capture. A captured transcript requires per-scenario review; successful process exit does not mark Tasks, reconnect, or upload compatibility as passed.
Groundlane is an open-source remote MCP server and trusted content access layer for AI agents. Today it provides one controlled interface for Web search, retrieval, deterministic extraction, URL/raw-HTML parsing, and a first bounded synchronous document_parse slice. The document tool accepts inline bytes or policy-checked public URLs and returns one canonical envelope with Markdown, structured, text, or all projection. A fully configured Cloudflare Worker can also create direct-to-R2 upload handoffs, finalize verified source ArtifactRefs, process them through a signed Worker-to-Container bridge, and keep the processing cache in D1/R2 through a separate private two-phase bridge. These paths have deterministic tests but no controlled production or target-client proof yet. Self-hosted Node deployments can opt into a durable SQLite processing cache and durable corpus runtime. OCR is available through document_ocr (OCR.space), audio transcription through document_transcribe (Workers AI Whisper), and legacy Office conversion through document_convert (anydoc WASM, zero cost). document_smart_parse auto-detects file type and routes to the correct tool. Async document execution, model-assisted parsing, and a Cloudflare corpus backend remain roadmap work. The operator-owned corpus control plane keeps portable corpus identity, source enrollment, access, freshness, deletion, and citation contracts separate from its rebuildable SQLite index.
Groundlane is an early preview (0.1.0). Tool contracts and deployment behavior may change. The target OSS V1 Stable Release is an operator-hosted open-source product; Managed Groundlane Cloud is a later roadmap item, not an available service. Groundlane is not a CAPTCHA solver or a universal anti-bot bypass.
OSS V1 Stable is planned as a Web + document release rather than a Web-only release. The current document_parse implementation has deterministic local profiles for text-based PDF; DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX; CSV, TXT, Markdown, JSON, XML, and HTML; and bounded ODF, RTF, EPUB, and EML. These profiles still require the remaining security corpus and live client/release gates before V1 can be declared stable. OCR is implemented via document_ocr, legacy Office conversion via document_convert (anydoc WASM, zero cost), audio transcription via document_transcribe, and table extraction via document_table_extract. Complex layout/formula/figure recovery and scholarly full-text extraction remain experimental roadmap candidates. The existing parse tool remains the backward-compatible URL/raw-HTML parser.
The document roadmap uses configurable, bounded retention rather than silent permanent storage. Working defaults are a 15-minute upload intent, a one-hour staging cleanup window, a 24-hour transient artifact, and a 24-hour ownership-scoped processing cache. Callers may adjust upload, artifact, and cache expiry within operator-advertised bounds; out-of-range requests are rejected instead of silently clamped. The staging cleanup window is operator-controlled. Operators may change defaults/maxima or disable caching through an observable document policy. Explicit corpus enrollment uses its own retention policy and defaults to retention until removal; expiry extension is always explicit.
document_parse returns the versioned, provider-neutral canonical document envelope and a deterministic projection. Markdown is the default projection; text, structured, and all-output modes are explicit options and declare lossiness, omissions, and canonical references. Self-hosted inline and URL parsing can return a durable result reference when DOCUMENT_ARTIFACT_STATE_PATH is configured; otherwise oversized output is rejected. Artifact source input is active only on the Cloudflare edge profile when D1, R2, R2 S3 presigning credentials, and the internal signing secret are all configured; otherwise it fails closed. The existing URL/raw-HTML parse schema remains compatible.
Document execution keeps an explicit dual-track contract. The current deterministic slice is synchronous and bounded by one end-to-end deadline; it never silently becomes an async job. Set DOCUMENT_CACHE_STATE_PATH on the self-hosted Node service to enable the ownership-scoped SQLite processing cache; document_parse then supports use, refresh, and bypass, including restart-safe hits and source-specific rebinding. The reference Cloudflare profile explicitly enables the same cache contract over D1 metadata and R2 immutable payloads. Container parsing uses a versioned, body-bound private lookup/commit bridge; Worker-owned TTL policy cannot be overridden by the Container. Credential-scoped source bindings and artifact-expiry caps prevent cross-credential reuse or cache retention beyond the source. Set CORPUS_STATE_PATH to mount the self-hosted durable corpus runtime: its manifest is lifecycle and authorization truth, normalized source bytes are immutable artifacts, and its SQLite search index is rebuildable derived state. Corpus/source expiry, ACL, credential and tenant binding, restart, exact rebuild, removal, and retryable deletion are enforced without changing public-Web web_search. A Cloudflare corpus backend, controlled result-storage acceptance, and document async jobs remain open. The checked-in hourly Worker cron performs bounded artifact, staging, and cache cleanup; controlled deployment evidence remains pending. Linkup async research is a separate, conditionally configured MCP Tasks path described below.
Tools at a glance
Tool | What it does | Current execution paths |
| Reads a public URL as Markdown, text, or HTML | Bounded HTTP, local readable normalization, and eligible optional Jina/browser fallbacks |
| Searches the public web with normalized results | Bounded auto fusion with next-batch retry, explicit single-provider, fallback, or deep routing across fourteen providers |
| Retrieves grounded answers from answer-capable providers | Parallel fan-out or fallback across You.com Answer and Linkup sourced answers, with provider attribution and citations |
| Retrieves provider-attributed research reports | Parallel fan-out or fallback across Linkup Research, You.com Research, and Parallel Responses, with citations |
| Starts and reconnects to durable Linkup research | Explicit compatibility tools over the same durable runtime as MCP Tasks; no global list and no provider task ID exposure |
| Fetches URL content through provider content APIs | Parallel fan-out or fallback across Linkup Fetch, You.com Contents, Exa Contents, Tavily Extract, Firecrawl Scrape, TinyFish Fetch, Keenable Fetch, and Crawl4AI |
| Discovers URLs from a public site | Parallel fan-out or fallback across Firecrawl Map and Tavily Map, with provider attribution |
| Crawls bounded pages from a public site | Parallel fan-out or fallback across Firecrawl Crawl and Tavily Crawl, with capped pages and content |
| Searches news-specific provider indexes | Parallel fan-out or fallback across Brave News, Serper News, and SerpApi Google News |
| Searches image-specific provider indexes | Parallel fan-out or fallback across Brave Images, Serper Images, and SerpApi Google Images |
| Extracts named fields into structured JSON | Deterministic selector and bounded pattern engines with per-call output caps; no implicit LLM step |
| Extracts structured fields from a URL against a caller-provided bounded schema using a provider model | Explicit opt-in provider-backed extraction; remote |
| Parses a URL or raw HTML into reusable structures | Local document, metadata, link, media, and table parsers; URL inputs use the bounded fetch pipeline |
| Auto-detects file type and routes to the correct parser | Meta-tool: scanned PDF→OCR, legacy Office→convert, ZIP→archive, EML→email, audio→transcribe, else→parse; no LLM; reports |
| Extracts and parses files from a ZIP archive | Deterministic, no LLM or external API; each supported file inside parsed through the same engine as |
| Splits parsed document blocks into hierarchical multi-level chunks for RAG | Deterministic, no LLM; configurable token levels (default 2048→512→128); each chunk has parent-child references and block provenance |
| Extracts a structured table-of-contents tree from a document | Deterministic heading detection via Markdown |
| Parses EML with recursive attachment extraction | Deterministic; returns headers, body text, and each attachment parsed through the same engine as |
| Extracts text from scanned PDFs and images using OCR | OCR.space API (free 25k requests/month); supports PDF, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, WebP; fail-closed when |
| Transcribes audio to text with word-level timestamps | Cloudflare Workers AI Whisper (free 10k Neurons/day); supports MP3, WAV, WebM, OGG, FLAC, M4A; reuses |
| Converts document files to Markdown or modern Office formats | Default: anydoc WASM (14 formats, zero cost, no API key); optional CloudConvert fallback for |
| Extracts tables from PDFs using spatial heuristics | Deterministic, no LLM or external API; pdf.js-based coordinate analysis; works best on regular grid-aligned tables |
| Compares two documents and returns a structured diff | Deterministic, no LLM or external API; parses both documents through |
| Parses a bounded document into a canonical envelope and deterministic projection; | Inline base64 or policy-checked public URL; optional self-hosted SQLite cache; verified source ArtifactRef on the fully configured Cloudflare edge profile |
| Creates a credential-bound single-PUT handoff, then verifies and finalizes a source ArtifactRef | Cloudflare Worker edge only when D1, R2, R2 S3 presigning credentials, and internal signing are configured; otherwise fail-closed |
| Immediately revokes a caller-owned source ArtifactRef, deletes its immutable bytes, and revokes all parser-option cache bindings for that source | Cloudflare Worker edge; deletion and expiry cleanup are credential/owner scoped and retryable |
| Reads or revokes a durable self-hosted document result by its | Self-hosted Node when |
| Creates, reads, or cancels an async document job from a verified source | Cloudflare edge when async, output edge, internal signing, Reducto credential, D1, and R2 are all configured; otherwise fail-closed |
| Reads the provider-neutral document/artifact policy: cache, upload, artifact, and corpus defaults with hard caps | Read-only policy introspection; interactive TTL available in modern protocol mode |
| Creates or deletes an operator-owned corpus with retention caps | Self-hosted durable SQLite runtime when |
| Enrolls, updates, or removes a source in a corpus with ACL, retention, and provenance | Self-hosted durable SQLite runtime; removal immediately revokes access and cache bindings |
| Reads corpus manifest truth, enrollment counts, backend health, and deletion state | Self-hosted durable SQLite runtime |
| Searches an operator-owned corpus with boundary and freshness provenance | Self-hosted durable SQLite runtime; results are never labeled as public web search |
| Tests retrieval quality for a corpus query against expected source IDs | Wraps |
| Inspects a corpus source by parsing it into document blocks with previews and field labels | Requires durable corpus storage; read-only, no LLM — useful for QA before RAG indexing |
| Inspects how a corpus source will be chunked for RAG ingestion with hierarchical previews and field labels | Requires durable corpus storage; read-only, no LLM — useful for verifying chunk quality before indexing |
| Creates, reads, pages, or cancels a durable provider-neutral crawl job | Full/Container mode only; Lite advertises the tools but fails closed with |
| Checks provider account-balance APIs when available | Linkup credits, You.com keyed credits, Firecrawl remaining credits, and SerpApi searches left; unsupported providers return explicit diagnostic status |
| Lists provider features and Groundlane-exposed surfaces | Static capability matrix that separates vendor features from currently implemented Groundlane tools |
| Combines account balance, local tool budgets, capabilities, and routing hints | One provider-scoped diagnostic view for billing status, Groundlane provider-dispatch guardrails, exposed tools, keyless availability, and next checks |
| Inspects Groundlane's local provider attempt guardrails | Instance-local daily/monthly counters with limit, used, remaining, exhausted, and reset metadata; not provider billing truth |
| Queries tool cost tier, latency tier, provider requirements, and read-only status | Static policy metadata for agent decision-making before tool calls; no live measurements |
| Searches academic papers on Semantic Scholar | Free API (1k req/s unauthenticated); returns title, abstract, authors, year, venue, citations, TL;DR, DOI, ArXiv ID, and open access PDF link |
| Looks up a specific paper by ID, DOI, or ArXiv ID | Free API; returns full metadata with references and citations lists |
| Operator-only: queries the Groundlane error log | Cloudflare Analytics Engine query filtered by tool, code, hintCode, or time range; returns up to |
Fetch/extract/parse results report retrieval provenance such as engine, backend, finalUrl, bytes, and truncated when they fetch a URL. Automatic search defaults to batches of at most two complementary providers, canonical-URL deduplication, and RRF while retaining selected/attempted/succeeded provider provenance; if a federated batch has no successful provider, Groundlane tries the next eligible batch within the same deadline. Non-explicit web_search fallback treats a single provider rejection, timeout, quota error, 5xx, or malformed response as a warning and continues to the next eligible provider; an explicit provider preserves that provider's error instead of silently switching sources. Provider-backed tools such as web_answer, web_research, web_content, web_map, web_crawl, web_news, and web_images default to parallel fan-out and return each provider result separately instead of synthesizing them. Pinning a provider stays single-source. web_fetch, web_extract, and URL-backed parse work without a search-provider key.
Provider vendors expose more APIs than Groundlane currently wires into MCP. See provider inventory for the verified feature backlog and the distinction between vendor capability, implemented Groundlane tool, live smoke, account balance evidence, and Groundlane's local attempt budgets.
Use provider_quota as the first diagnostic view when a provider-backed tool exhausts local attempts or web_search returns zero results: it shows provider account-balance status, Groundlane's local provider-dispatch budgets, implemented tools, and searchRouting hints together. Use provider_balance for provider-owned account credits only, and search_budget_status when you specifically need the raw local attempt counters. A balance result of not_configured means the runtime lacks the credential needed for that provider's balance API, not that keyless quota is exhausted.
Research compatibility
web_research deliberately keeps one synchronous MCP contract even when an upstream provider is asynchronous. You.com Research and Parallel Responses return synchronously. Linkup Research creates an upstream task with POST /v1/research, then Groundlane polls GET /v1/research/{id} inside the same request deadline and returns the completed report when available.
Long Linkup research jobs can outlive the MCP request. In that case Groundlane returns a bounded timeout/cancellation error instead of blocking indefinitely; the upstream provider task may still continue outside Groundlane. Use effort=lite, strategy=fallback, and provider=linkup when you want the cheapest bounded Linkup path.
For durable research, self-hosted Node operators configure both ASYNC_TASK_STATE_PATH and LINKUP_API_KEY. Modern 2026-07-28 callers that declare the per-request io.modelcontextprotocol/tasks extension may receive a server-directed task from web_research_start and then use exactly tasks/get, tasks/update, and tasks/cancel. Other callers use the four explicit tools above. Task IDs are Groundlane-owned and owner/credential-bound; provider IDs stay private. State uses revision-fenced SQLite locally and D1 at the Cloudflare Worker edge, with a five-second minimum polling interval, bounded TTL, monotonic terminal states, and a durable provider-create effect journal. Linkup documents no Research cancel endpoint, so cancellation stops Groundlane polling but does not claim upstream cancellation. These paths have deterministic local/D1 tests; the current checkout has not yet supplied controlled deployment or Claude/Codex/Cursor transcripts.
Related MCP server: Wick
Quick start
Requirements: Node.js 22.13+, pnpm 10, and Git. Chromium is needed only when the local browser backend is enabled.
git clone https://github.com/vincentxuu/groundlane.git
cd groundlane
pnpm install
pnpm exec playwright install chromium
cp .env.example .envSet a long random GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN in .env, then start the server:
set -a
source .env
set +a
pnpm devGroundlane now exposes an authenticated Streamable HTTP MCP endpoint at http://localhost:8080/mcp. Search keys are optional; add them only for the providers you want to enable. Keenable can run without a key through its public endpoint, and You.com can run without a key through its free MCP Search profile; set provider keys only when you want authenticated account allowances.
Deploy to Cloudflare
For a fresh Cloudflare deployment, authenticate Wrangler, create the OAuth KV namespace, inspect the target's configured secret names, enter the two required authentication secrets and any optional provider keys, then deploy:
pnpm exec wrangler login
pnpm exec wrangler whoami
pnpm exec wrangler kv namespace create OAUTH_KV
# paste the returned id into wrangler.jsonc's kv_namespaces[0].id
pnpm secrets:status
pnpm secrets:setup
pnpm run deployThese secret commands affect Cloudflare only; they do not read or update the
local .env. Without --env, Wrangler uses the top-level target in
wrangler.jsonc; if you select a named environment, use that same --env for
status, setup, and deploy.
The basic static-token deployment needs two caller-facing secrets with different values. The reference deployment also uses a separate internal signing secret; managed-credential administration uses a fourth isolated secret:
GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN— the bearer token headless/CLI clients (Codex, Claude Code, scheduled cloud automation) send to/mcp.OAUTH_OWNER_PASSPHRASE— gates the/authorizeconsent screen shown to interactive cloud connectors (claude.ai, ChatGPT). Reusing the bearer token here would let a phished consent page leak the same credential every headless client uses, so generate it separately.GROUNDLANE_INTERNAL_SIGNING_SECRET— signs the short-lived principal context sent from the Worker to the Container. The Container does not accept the raw caller bearer in this mode.GROUNDLANE_ADMIN_TOKEN— required only for managed-credential administration; it cannot call/mcp.
Generate each with at least 32 random characters, for example:
openssl rand -hex 32Save both in a password manager. Run pnpm secrets:setup; at the numbered
prompt these two are listed under authentication (GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN,
then OAUTH_OWNER_PASSPHRASE) — select both, e.g. 1,2, then paste each
value when prompted (input is hidden, nothing is echoed back). Search-provider
keys are optional. Use pnpm secrets:setup -- --help to inspect the safe
interactive flow. Setup first presents one numbered list: select multiple
secrets with an entry such as 2,4-6, then it prompts only for those values
and sends one bulk update. To paste everything once, copy
cloudflare-secrets.example.env to the ignored
.cloudflare-secrets.env, fill the values you use, then run:
pnpm secrets:setup -- --from-file .cloudflare-secrets.env --dry-run
pnpm secrets:setup -- --from-file .cloudflare-secrets.envThe import accepts .env or JSON, rejects unknown names, and never prints
values. Delete the populated file after setup if you do not need it locally.
Then follow the Cloudflare deployment guide
to verify health, readiness, authentication, and MCP behavior.
Pushes to main automatically deploy after the CI quality job succeeds. The
repository must have CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID and CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN GitHub
Actions secrets, plus GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN for post-deploy smoke; see
Continuous deployment.
Cloudflare Container deploys build a Docker image locally before upload. If pnpm run deploy stalls while loading Docker Hub metadata or pulling node:22-bookworm-slim, check the local Docker credential helper first; this is a local Docker/registry problem, not a Worker or TypeScript build result. The production smoke test remains the final deployment proof:
GROUNDLANE_MCP_URL="https://your-worker.example/mcp" pnpm smokeCI runs pnpm run wait:container and pnpm run smoke:retry after deploy, so a
successful run means the Cloudflare Container application has left provisioning
and the deployed MCP server responds with the expected tool contracts. At
runtime, the Worker also starts the named Container instance before
authenticated /readyz and /mcp requests when Cloudflare reports it as not
running.
Connect an MCP client
Groundlane uses the split TypeScript SDK v2 packages and has explicit legacy
2025-11-25 and modern 2026-07-28 handlers. The conservative default is
GROUNDLANE_MCP_PROTOCOL_MODE=legacy-only; use dual only for controlled
migration testing, or modern-only to disable legacy compatibility. The modern
path supports self-contained requests, server/discover, and per-request
client metadata without initialize or Mcp-Session-Id. Modern catalog and
resource cache hints are explicitly private with a zero TTL, so dynamic
availability and caller capabilities are rebuilt per request. This local runtime
also checks the standard routing headers against the JSON-RPC body at both the
Worker and Container, caps authenticated JSON edge inspection at 1 MiB, does
not reflect caller-controlled names in mismatch errors, and propagates request
cancellation instead of rewriting it as a Container outage. This local runtime
support is not evidence of deployed conformance or target-client support. The
fixtures, coexistence gates, and rollback sequence are documented in
MCP protocol migration and rollback.
In dual or modern-only mode, document_policy can request an interactive
TTL with interactiveTtlFor. This bounded, read-only multi-round trip requires
the separate GROUNDLANE_MCP_REQUEST_STATE_SECRET (at least 32 bytes). Its
five-minute request state is signed, caller/credential/method-bound, safe to
resume on another instance sharing the secret, and readable rather than
encrypted; it must never contain secrets. Exact retries are supported, while
disconnecting one HTTP leg only cancels that leg and does not cancel a task.
MCP Tasks is separately opt-in on every request. It is advertised only when a durable runtime is configured locally or when the Worker has both D1 and a Linkup key. The installed SDK does not yet dispatch the stable extension methods, so Groundlane uses a bounded raw adapter for the official three-method surface and leaves every other method on the SDK handler. This is an implementation compatibility seam, not target-client proof.
Export the same token in the shell that starts your client:
export GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN="your-long-random-secret"Codex
codex mcp add groundlane \
--url http://localhost:8080/mcp \
--bearer-token-env-var GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKENClaude Code
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user groundlane \
http://localhost:8080/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer ${GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN}"The Claude Code command expands the token into its MCP configuration. For shared or production machines, use a secret-backed header helper instead of storing a plaintext token.
These bearer-token steps also cover headless and scheduled cloud automation
(cron jobs, cloud routines, workflow runners): configure
GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN as a secret in that platform once, no OAuth needed.
claude.ai / ChatGPT (OAuth)
Interactive cloud connectors expect OAuth, not a pasted API key. Add
groundlane as a custom connector using your deployed Worker's /mcp URL
(https://your-worker.example/mcp). Modern clients can register through CIMD
without a separate pre-registration step; the DCR compatibility endpoint
(/register) is bearer-protected to avoid unauthenticated OAuth state growth.
DCR clients must explicitly send application_type: web requires HTTPS
redirects, while native is limited to HTTP loopback redirects.
See Cloudflare deployment for the exact flow.
The connector opens a consent screen after registration. Enter the
OAUTH_OWNER_PASSPHRASE you configured during deployment to approve — this is
a separate secret from GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN, used only to gate that consent
screen.
Make the first call
Ask the client to call web_fetch with:
{
"url": "https://example.com/",
"format": "markdown",
"render": "never"
}The structured response includes an envelope like this (abridged):
{
"ok": true,
"data": {
"finalUrl": "https://example.com/",
"title": "Example Domain",
"content": "This domain is for use in illustrative examples...",
"engine": "http",
"backend": "direct",
"truncated": false
}
}Use pnpm smoke while the server is running to verify the MCP handshake plus web_fetch and web_extract against example.com.
Why Groundlane?
One MCP contract: clients do not need provider-specific tool schemas.
HTTP first: ordinary reads avoid browser cost; Chromium is reserved for rendering and wait conditions.
Deterministic extraction: CSS selectors produce structured output without an unrequested model inference step.
Bounded by default: URL policy, DNS/redirect checks, one deadline, byte/output caps, and concurrency limits remain in the Groundlane boundary.
Explicit hosted fallbacks: Jina Reader and Browserless receive a preflight-validated public final URL only when the operator enables them.
Run Groundlane
Mode | Best for | Entry point |
Local Node | Development and evaluation | |
Docker | Standalone Node/Chromium container |
|
Cloudflare Worker Lite | Zero-cost production ($0) |
|
Cloudflare Worker + Container | Full mode with Playwright browser |
|
Lite vs Full mode
Groundlane supports two Cloudflare deployment modes:
Lite (Worker-only) | Full (Worker + Container) | |
Config |
|
|
Entry |
|
|
Data layer | D1 + R2 | node:sqlite (in-container) |
HTTP fetcher | Workers | SSRF-safe |
Browser | Disabled (CF Browser Rendering ready) | Playwright + Chromium |
MCP tools | All 57 tools | All 57 tools |
Cost | $0 (Workers free tier) | ~$1.5–3/mo (container memory + disk) |
Lite keeps the same discoverable tool surface, but crawl_create,
crawl_status, crawl_result, and crawl_cancel return
PROVIDER_UNAVAILABLE; durable crawl-job state currently requires Full mode.
Deploy lite mode:
wrangler d1 migrations apply groundlane-managed-tokens -c wrangler.lite.jsonc --remote
wrangler secret bulk .cloudflare-secrets.env -c wrangler.lite.jsonc
wrangler deploy -c wrangler.lite.jsoncSupported adapters
Groundlane capability | Implemented adapters |
Search | Linkup, Keenable, TinyFish, Parallel, Browserbase, Brave, SerpApi, SearchAPI.io, Tavily, Exa, Firecrawl, Serper, You.com, SearXNG (self-hosted) |
Grounded answer | Linkup, You.com |
Research report | Linkup, You.com, Parallel |
URL content API | Linkup, You.com, Exa, Tavily, Firecrawl, TinyFish, Keenable |
Site map discovery | Firecrawl, Tavily |
Bounded site crawl | Firecrawl, Tavily |
News search | Brave, Serper, SerpApi |
Image search | Brave, Serper, SerpApi |
Account balance | Linkup, You.com, Firecrawl, SerpApi |
Quota diagnostics | Provider quota summary and local provider budget status |
Hosted Reader fallback | Jina Reader (opt-in) |
Browser rendering | Local Playwright, Browserless, Hyperbrowser, or CF Browser Rendering API (opt-in) |
Cloudflare runtime | Worker-only lite mode or Worker + Container full mode; CF Browser Rendering, AI Search, AI Gateway, Agents, and Workflows are documented future adapter surfaces |
Provider capabilities, pricing, and free allowances
Verified against public official pricing and billing pages on 2026-08-30. Prices below are public USD list prices before applicable tax; enterprise contracts and logged-in account offers may differ. “Groundlane tools” lists implemented runtime paths, not every product the vendor sells. Free monthly/daily allowances, balance top-ups, ongoing rate-limited access, and one-time signup credits are deliberately kept distinct. See the detailed free search and scraping comparison for the accounting method and broader browser/scraping market.
Provider | Groundlane tools | Public pricing relevant to those tools | Free allowance and important conditions |
Search, Content/Extract, Map, Crawl | PAYG | 1,000 credits every month, resets on the first day of the month; no card required | |
Search, Content | Search starts at | New account receives | |
Search, Research | Search is | Eligible organization receives | |
Search only | Developer is | Free plan includes 1,000 Search calls and 1 browser hour monthly, 3 concurrent sessions; no card required; Free Search has no overage | |
Search, News, Images | Search is | Each selected product plan receives | |
Search, Content/Scrape, Map, Crawl | Scrape/Crawl costs 1 credit/page, Map 1 credit/call, Search 2 credits/10 results; paid self-serve plans can buy plan-dependent | 1,000 credits monthly, no card; normally no rollover. Auto-reload is configurable and can be disabled. Public pages currently disagree on one Standard plan headline, so verify checkout before purchase | |
Search, News, Images | Starter | 250 successful searches per billing cycle; resets at renewal. Current public page does not state whether a card is required | |
Search | Developer | 100 signup requests, no card; this is a finite trial, not a documented monthly allowance; Groundlane keeps it opt-in by default | |
Search, Answer, Research, Content/Fetch | Standard Search | Professional-email signup receives | |
Search, Content/Fetch | Public headline is | Verified organization receives 100,000 requests monthly. Keyless public Search/Fetch does not use that pool and is shared per IP: 1,000/hour and 10/second | |
Search, News, Images | Prepaid packs start at | 2,500 signup queries, no card; no documented monthly reset; Groundlane keeps it opt-in by default | |
Search, Answer, Research, Content | Search and Answer are | Keyless Search: 100 queries/day. Keyed new account: | |
Search, Content/Fetch | Search and Fetch are | Search 30 requests/minute and Fetch 150 URLs/minute remain free at |
Document, browser, and research provider credentials
The tools below use external services that are separate from the search provider router. Each is optional and fail-closed when not configured. Env var names link to signup pages.
Provider | Groundlane tool | Env var | Free allowance | Card required? |
|
| 25,000 requests/month (permanent) | No | |
|
| 10,000 Neurons/day (permanent) | No | |
|
| 25 conversions/day (permanent) | No | |
|
| 100 req/s with key; ~1 req/min without | No | |
|
| 1,000 credits once (not renewable) | No | |
|
| Open source; run | N/A | |
|
| Open source; run | N/A | |
anydoc (built-in) |
| — | Built-in WASM, zero cost | N/A |
document_parse, document_table_extract, document_archive_extract, document_email_extract, document_chunk, document_toc, document_compare, and document_smart_parse are fully built-in and require no external credentials.
Provider-backed routing can apply conservative per-instance monthly and daily attempt budgets. These are safeguards, not provider billing truth; provider dashboards and spend limits remain authoritative. provider_balance reports account balances only for providers with implemented official balance APIs, currently Linkup, You.com, Firecrawl, and SerpApi. Exa, Browserbase, and Cloudflare are better modeled as usage/cost diagnostics. See Configuration for credentials, routing, limits, and budget semantics, and Provider inventory for the current production provider status, capability matrix, and balance API verification.
Provider selection
Automatic web_search uses the configured SEARCH_PROVIDER_ORDER, capability filtering, provider health, and attempt budgets. The default order favors renewable or account-backed providers first, keeps keyless Keenable and You.com available as low-friction fallback paths, and keeps finite-trial providers opt-in when their free allowance is not renewable or not measurable through an API. Explicit provider calls bypass automatic selection but still require credentials, capability support, URL safety checks, and configured budgets.
For provider-backed tools other than web_search, strategy=parallel returns attributed results from every selected provider; strategy=fallback stops at the first successful provider to reduce spend.
Runtime and billing boundaries
Cloudflare is Groundlane's production runtime today, and it also exposes adjacent capabilities that could become future Groundlane adapters. AI Search is a managed search service for operator-provided data with Workers, REST, and MCP access. Browser Run / Browser Rendering exposes content, markdown, screenshot, PDF, accessibility tree, links, crawl, and structured JSON browser actions through REST APIs or Workers bindings. Agents and Workflows provide durable agent sessions, scheduled work, WebSockets, recoverable steps, and tool orchestration. AI Gateway can add model observability, caching, retries, rate limiting, and fallback.
Those services are not the same thing as the public-web search providers in the provider router. Cloudflare is therefore not listed under provider_balance: that tool is reserved for web-data provider account balances exposed by official provider APIs, currently Linkup credits, You.com API credits, Firecrawl remaining credits, and SerpApi searches left.
Cloudflare usage must be tracked through the Cloudflare dashboard, billing exports, logs, metrics, or future Cloudflare-specific diagnostics. Container cost is based on active runtime resources such as vCPU, memory, disk, egress, Workers, Durable Objects, and logs; those units are separate from search-provider requests or credits. Groundlane local budgets do not cap Cloudflare runtime spend.
Potential Cloudflare-specific Groundlane work should stay separate from search-provider routing: a Browser Run backend for rendered web_fetch / web_content, an AI Search adapter for private/operator-owned indexes, Cloudflare diagnostics for runtime usage, and Workflows-based async tools for long research or crawl jobs.
Large generated documentation sites need source-aware parsing instead of raw page extraction. Cloudflare's docs publish Markdown pages, scoped llms.txt / llms-full.txt indexes, and OpenAPI schemas for the API reference. Groundlane should prefer those machine-readable sources for Cloudflare docs and other similar sites, then slice by product, endpoint, heading, or schema operation. Raising maxBytes or selecting the whole main element is a last resort because it can exceed output limits before the useful section is isolated. The current runtime path proactively handles likely documentation URLs for Markdown/text web_fetch requests by trying the same URL with Accept: text/markdown, trying Cloudflare-style /index.md, then checking same-origin scoped/root llms.txt manifests for a nearest Markdown page after bounded direct failures. Generic machine API paths such as /api/v1/... are not treated as documentation solely because they contain an api segment, and source discovery never suppresses request deadlines or cancellation. Source Markdown cleanup removes front matter and common docs chrome before normal output truncation. OpenAPI slicing exists as pure JSON logic and is not automatically wired into runtime fetch until large schema discovery is bounded.
How it works
MCP client
|
v
Worker / Node HTTP edge authentication, request identity
Cloudflare hosts this layer in production
|
v
tool registry web_search | web_answer | web_research | web_content | web_map | web_crawl
web_news | web_images | web_fetch | web_extract | parse
document_smart_parse | document_parse | document_ocr | document_convert
document_table_extract | document_chunk | document_toc | document_compare
document_archive_extract | document_email_extract | document_transcribe
paper_search | paper_lookup
diagnostics: provider_quota | provider_balance | search_budget_status | provider_capabilities | error_log
|
+-- provider router replaceable search adapters (14 providers incl. self-hosted SearXNG)
+-- safe HTTP + Reader bounded retrieval and readable content
+-- browser backend local Playwright, Browserless, Hyperbrowser, or CF Browser Rendering
`-- document engine bounded parser, anydoc WASM, OCR.space, Workers AI WhisperCore policies do not depend on a search provider or browser runtime. Groundlane Reader uses Mozilla Readability with a local fallback for selector-free Markdown/text; raw HTML and explicit selectors retain deterministic DOM semantics. See Architecture and the reproducible Reader benchmark.
Security and limitations
Web retrieval is SSRF-sensitive. Groundlane treats user URLs, redirects, provider-returned URLs, browser subresources, WebSockets, and DNS answers as untrusted. Keep authentication enabled, preserve the default limits, and apply an outbound network policy in production.
Groundlane does not guarantee CAPTCHA solving, invisible automation, or access to content the operator is not authorized to retrieve. Rendering JavaScript is not proof of anti-bot bypass. The local browser gives a detected access challenge at most five seconds to clear; if the original request deadline has not expired first, a persistent challenge returns retryable UPSTREAM_ERROR at browser-challenge. web_fetch does not automatically spend provider credits by switching to web_content; callers must opt into provider-backed retrieval explicitly. See SECURITY.md for the threat model and private vulnerability reporting.
Project status
An isolated PRD staging profile is available in wrangler.staging.jsonc, with independent Cloudflare storage and no production provider keys. See the staging deployment and cache smoke runbook. Provisioning or deploying it does not satisfy the remaining live acceptance gates.
Staging's nine public MCP inline cache checks passed on 2026-09-05 after fixing private outbound-handler registration. Source-upload/delete and scheduled physical-cleanup evidence remain separate gates.
pnpm smoke checks the default profile's exact tool inventory and basic calls; inventory drift is regression-tested against the local MCP composition. It does not replace upload/cache lifecycle or Claude/Codex/Cursor acceptance.
Current source version:
0.1.0early preview; no stable tool-contract guarantee yet.Implemented locally: the listed Web/search/extraction/parser/provider/corpus tools; synchronous deterministic
document_parse; optional restart-safe SQLite document cache and corpus runtime; Cloudflare Worker + Container; D1 managed-token authentication; MCP Tasks; the credential-bound D1/R2 source upload/finalize/parse path; and private Container-to-Worker D1/R2 cache composition. These paths have deterministic bridge, fake-D1/R2, deadline/cancellation, restart/rebuild, isolation, and bounded-cleanup tests. Cloudflare corpus composition, controlled result-storage deployment, and live client verification remain pending.Controlled D1 revoke acceptance passed on 2026-09-05: three initializations before revoke, ten 401 responses after commit, healthy control and fixture cleanup. Evidence and scope; repeatable operator smoke. Admin revoke API and multi-region behavior were not exercised.
Next: complete controlled dual-protocol, Tasks, R2 upload, scheduled-cleanup, and explicit async-document smokes, then retain Claude/Codex/Cursor transcripts before enabling the modern protocol in production. The managed-token registry and admin-only credential API are already wired to D1; the operator CLI is
tsx scripts/groundlane-credentials.mts. Remaining document work includes controlled result-storage/async acceptance and a Cloudflare corpus backend. Short research stays synchronous unless the caller explicitly chooses the Tasks/fallback path, and provider results remain separate. Generic LLM extraction, persistent authenticated browser sessions, and broader Groundlane-owned long-running orchestration remain demand-gated roadmap items.Open-source references are split into primary references and watchlist/discovery sources in the product requirements so low-maintenance candidates do not become runtime priorities by default.
Self-hosted document processing can enable an ownership-scoped, content-addressed SQLite result cache with a 24-hour working default, bounded caller TTL/cache controls, engine/version provenance, and source rebinding. The Cloudflare profile composes the same contract over D1/R2 when
DOCUMENT_CACHE_EDGE_ENABLED=true; nine inline cache checks passed in isolated staging; verified-source delete and physical-cleanup acceptance remain open.document_artifact_deleteand artifact expiry cleanup revoke every parser-option binding for that source without invalidating another source with identical bytes. Corpus update/remove/delete invalidates the corresponding normalized-source cache bindings; the Cloudflare corpus backend and its controlled lifecycle acceptance remain open. This does not cacheweb_fetch,web_extract, orparse.Planned file/document output uses a canonical structured envelope with stable block/source references and typed tables, assets, formulas, citations, capability states, spans, warnings, errors, and engine/model provenance. Markdown remains the default lossy projection; provider raw JSON is never the public contract, and the current HTML
parseschema remains unchanged.Commercial roadmap: OSS V1 Stable remains an operator-hosted open-source product. Self-hosting never requires a Groundlane Cloud account, license server, activation check, or mandatory phone-home. Managed Groundlane Cloud is an approved later roadmap phase released progressively as Internal Alpha, Invite-only Beta, then Managed Cloud Public Launch. A public no-card trial waits for verified tenant/secret isolation, allowance hard stops, abuse controls, Claude/Codex/Cursor compatibility, provider cost attribution, token revocation, project deletion, and basic incident handling. Cloud uses a hosted Remote MCP endpoint plus Web dashboard, preset-first routing with full provenance, and no silent funding switch. Importing OSS configuration into Cloud remains optional.
The detailed product requirements, capability matrix, roadmap, and acceptance criteria live in the product requirements.
Documentation
Contributing and support
Use GitHub Issues for bugs and feature proposals. Read CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct before opening a pull request. Report security vulnerabilities privately as described in SECURITY.md.
License
Groundlane is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
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Maintenance
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