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Groundlane

The trusted web access layer for AI agents.

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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.

IMPORTANT

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

web_fetch

Reads a public URL as Markdown, text, or HTML

Bounded HTTP, local readable normalization, and eligible optional Jina/browser fallbacks

web_search

Searches the public web with normalized results

Bounded auto fusion with next-batch retry, explicit single-provider, fallback, or deep routing across fourteen providers

web_answer

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

web_research

Retrieves provider-attributed research reports

Parallel fan-out or fallback across Linkup Research, You.com Research, and Parallel Responses, with citations

web_research_start / status / result / cancel

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

web_content

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

web_map

Discovers URLs from a public site

Parallel fan-out or fallback across Firecrawl Map and Tavily Map, with provider attribution

web_crawl

Crawls bounded pages from a public site

Parallel fan-out or fallback across Firecrawl Crawl and Tavily Crawl, with capped pages and content

web_news

Searches news-specific provider indexes

Parallel fan-out or fallback across Brave News, Serper News, and SerpApi Google News

web_images

Searches image-specific provider indexes

Parallel fan-out or fallback across Brave Images, Serper Images, and SerpApi Google Images

web_extract

Extracts named fields into structured JSON

Deterministic selector and bounded pattern engines with per-call output caps; no implicit LLM step

web_extract_schema

Extracts structured fields from a URL against a caller-provided bounded schema using a provider model

Explicit opt-in provider-backed extraction; remote $ref and unbounded nesting are rejected

parse

Parses a URL or raw HTML into reusable structures

Local document, metadata, link, media, and table parsers; URL inputs use the bounded fetch pipeline

document_smart_parse

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 routedTo and routeReason

document_archive_extract

Extracts and parses files from a ZIP archive

Deterministic, no LLM or external API; each supported file inside parsed through the same engine as document_parse

document_chunk

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

document_toc

Extracts a structured table-of-contents tree from a document

Deterministic heading detection via Markdown #, HTML <h1><h6>, ALL-CAPS, and Title Case heuristics

document_email_extract

Parses EML with recursive attachment extraction

Deterministic; returns headers, body text, and each attachment parsed through the same engine as document_parse

document_ocr

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 OCR_SPACE_API_KEY is not configured

document_transcribe

Transcribes audio to text with word-level timestamps

Cloudflare Workers AI Whisper (free 10k Neurons/day); supports MP3, WAV, WebM, OGG, FLAC, M4A; reuses CF_BROWSER_ACCOUNT_ID and CF_BROWSER_API_TOKEN

document_convert

Converts document files to Markdown or modern Office formats

Default: anydoc WASM (14 formats, zero cost, no API key); optional CloudConvert fallback for .docx/.xlsx/.pptx binary output

document_table_extract

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

document_compare

Compares two documents and returns a structured diff

Deterministic, no LLM or external API; parses both documents through document_parse, then produces block-level additions, deletions, and changes

document_parse

Parses a bounded document into a canonical envelope and deterministic projection; effort parameter controls quality-cost tradeoff (fast = local anydoc, standard = auto OCR upgrade, deep = Docling-serve VLM or MinerU Cloud)

Inline base64 or policy-checked public URL; optional self-hosted SQLite cache; verified source ArtifactRef on the fully configured Cloudflare edge profile

document_upload_create / document_upload_complete

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

document_artifact_delete

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

document_result_read / document_result_delete

Reads or revokes a durable self-hosted document result by its refId

Self-hosted Node when DOCUMENT_ARTIFACT_STATE_PATH is configured; bounded base64 chunks with ownership and credential binding

document_job_create / status / cancel

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

document_policy

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

corpus_create / corpus_delete

Creates or deletes an operator-owned corpus with retention caps

Self-hosted durable SQLite runtime when CORPUS_STATE_PATH is configured

corpus_enroll / corpus_update / corpus_remove

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

corpus_status

Reads corpus manifest truth, enrollment counts, backend health, and deletion state

Self-hosted durable SQLite runtime

corpus_search

Searches an operator-owned corpus with boundary and freshness provenance

Self-hosted durable SQLite runtime; results are never labeled as public web search

corpus_retrieval_test

Tests retrieval quality for a corpus query against expected source IDs

Wraps corpus_search; reports recall, rank, and missed sources — no LLM, read-only

corpus_source_inspect

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

corpus_chunk_inspect

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

crawl_create / crawl_status / crawl_result / crawl_cancel

Creates, reads, pages, or cancels a durable provider-neutral crawl job

Full/Container mode only; Lite advertises the tools but fails closed with PROVIDER_UNAVAILABLE because it has no durable crawl-job store

provider_balance

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

provider_capabilities

Lists provider features and Groundlane-exposed surfaces

Static capability matrix that separates vendor features from currently implemented Groundlane tools

provider_quota

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

search_budget_status

Inspects Groundlane's local provider attempt guardrails

Instance-local daily/monthly counters with limit, used, remaining, exhausted, and reset metadata; not provider billing truth

tool_policy

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

paper_search

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

paper_lookup

Looks up a specific paper by ID, DOI, or ArXiv ID

Free API; returns full metadata with references and citations lists

error_log

Operator-only: queries the Groundlane error log

Cloudflare Analytics Engine query filtered by tool, code, hintCode, or time range; returns up to limit most recent matching events newest first

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 .env

Set a long random GROUNDLANE_AUTH_TOKEN in .env, then start the server:

set -a
source .env
set +a
pnpm dev

Groundlane 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 deploy

These 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 /authorize consent 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 32

Save 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.env

The 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 smoke

CI 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_TOKEN

Claude 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

Quick start

Docker

Standalone Node/Chromium container

docker build -t groundlane . then docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 --env-file .env groundlane

Cloudflare Worker Lite

Zero-cost production ($0)

wrangler deploy -c wrangler.lite.jsonc

Cloudflare Worker + Container

Full mode with Playwright browser

wrangler deploy

Lite vs Full mode

Groundlane supports two Cloudflare deployment modes:

Lite (Worker-only)

Full (Worker + Container)

Config

wrangler.lite.jsonc

wrangler.jsonc

Entry

src/worker/lite-index.ts

src/worker/index.ts

Data layer

D1 + R2

node:sqlite (in-container)

HTTP fetcher

Workers fetch()

SSRF-safe node:http with DNS filtering

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.jsonc

Supported 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

Tavily

Search, Content/Extract, Map, Crawl

PAYG $0.008/credit; basic/advanced Search costs 1/2 credits; Extract, Map, and Crawl use page-based credit formulas

1,000 credits every month, resets on the first day of the month; no card required

Exa

Search, Content

Search starts at $7/1k requests; Contents is $1/1k pages per requested content type; deeper search modes cost more

New account receives $20 once, then $10 credits each month; no payment method required; exact reset anchor/rollover is not public

Parallel

Search, Research

Search is $1–$5/1k requests with 10 results; Responses research is $10–$250/1k depending on processor

Eligible organization receives $5 monthly; card required, one organization per card, unused credit expires at month end; signup/startup promotions have separate eligibility

Browserbase

Search only

Developer is $20/month; paid Search overage is $7/1k calls. Browser sessions, Fetch, Extract, and Agents are vendor features not exposed by Groundlane

Free plan includes 1,000 Search calls and 1 browser hour monthly, 3 concurrent sessions; no card required; Free Search has no overage

Brave

Search, News, Images

Search is $5/1k requests. Brave Answers has a different query-plus-token price and is not a Groundlane tool

Each selected product plan receives $5 monthly credit; card required for anti-fraud verification; official free-credit terms also require attribution

Firecrawl

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 $5 reload batches

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

SerpApi

Search, News, Images

Starter $25/month for 1,000 successful searches; Developer $75 for 5,000. Cached, errored, and failed searches do not count

250 successful searches per billing cycle; resets at renewal. Current public page does not state whether a card is required

SearchAPI.io

Search

Developer $40/month for 10,000 successful searches ($4/1k); larger plans reduce the unit price. Only HTTP 200 searches are billed

100 signup requests, no card; this is a finite trial, not a documented monthly allowance; Groundlane keeps it opt-in by default

Linkup

Search, Answer, Research, Content/Fetch

Standard Search $0.005, sourced answer $0.006, deep Search $0.05–$0.055; Fetch $0.001–$0.01; Research $0.25–$2.50 per call

Professional-email signup receives $20; eligible accounts are topped back to $20 monthly, not given another fixed $20. Eligibility and top-up date are not fully public

Keenable

Search, Content/Fetch

Public headline is $4/1k requests, or $1/1k at 100 RPS+; actual SKU usage is reported per response and can vary

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

Serper

Search, News, Images

Prepaid packs start at $50 for 50,000 queries ($1/1k) and decrease to $0.30/1k; purchased credits expire after six months

2,500 signup queries, no card; no documented monthly reset; Groundlane keeps it opt-in by default

You.com

Search, Answer, Research, Content

Search and Answer are $5/1k calls; Contents $1/1k pages; Research starts at $12/1k and rises by effort tier

Keyless Search: 100 queries/day. Keyed new account: $100 one-time starter credit, no card. These are separate pools; auto top-up is opt-in and currently has no monthly spending cap

TinyFish

Search, Content/Fetch

Search and Fetch are $0; vendor Agent is $0.016/step and Browser $0.002/minute, but Groundlane does not expose those paid surfaces

Search 30 requests/minute and Fetch 150 URLs/minute remain free at $0 Wallet balance; API key still required. New-account $8 Wallet is one-time and applies to paid surfaces

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?

OCR.space

document_ocr

OCR_SPACE_API_KEY

25,000 requests/month (permanent)

No

Cloudflare Workers AI

document_transcribe

CF_BROWSER_ACCOUNT_ID + CF_BROWSER_API_TOKEN

10,000 Neurons/day (permanent)

No

CloudConvert

document_convert (modern-office output only)

CLOUDCONVERT_API_KEY

25 conversions/day (permanent)

No

Semantic Scholar

paper_search / paper_lookup

SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY

100 req/s with key; ~1 req/min without

No

Hyperbrowser

web_fetch (browser render)

HYPERBROWSER_API_KEY

1,000 credits once (not renewable)

No

Crawl4AI

web_content

CRAWL4AI_BASE_URL

Open source; run docker run -p 11235:11235 unclecode/crawl4ai then set URL

N/A

SearXNG

web_search

SEARXNG_BASE_URL

Open source; run docker run -p 8888:8080 searxng/searxng then set URL; unlimited searches

N/A

anydoc (built-in)

document_convert (markdown output)

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 Whisper

Core 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: 0.1.0 early 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_delete and 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 cache web_fetch, web_extract, or parse.

  • 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 parse schema 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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