mcp-retriever

One MCP server for web search, page extraction, and cited research. Use your own providers, combine their results, and keep API keys out of client configs.

• Search together: query two or three providers, deduplicate URLs, and merge rankings with web_search_fused.

• Read more: extract pages, crawl sites, and recover 404/410 pages from Wayback Machine snapshots when archive fallback is enabled.

• Control usage: optional spending caps for provider-reported usage, cooldowns, and paged access to large results.

Supports Tavily, Brave, Exa, You.com, SearXNG, GitHub, Linkup, Firecrawl, and Context.dev. Configure only what you use.

Context.dev covers web search, researched answers through ai_search, news search with context_news, scraping, and brand tools. Its highlights are available in the search and read tools. Exa search adds a lite type, and Firecrawl search categories are developer, gov, research, and pdf. See Configuration for details verified on 2026-10-19.

Quickstart

Requires Node.js 22+ and a provider key, or your own SearXNG instance.

npx -y mcp-retriever setup

Choose providers, save keys privately, and connect your MCP client. The wizard writes Claude Desktop and Cursor entries, or shows the command/configuration for Claude Code and Codex. Billable key checks require consent.

Keys are stored in ~/.config/mcp-retriever/credentials.env, not in client configs. Restart your client after setup.

Add, test, or remove keys:

npx mcp-retriever keys

Screenshots show a demo session with fixture credentials and a mocked key-check response, not a live provider validation.

Related MCP server: Web Search MCP

Example

Call web_search_fused with two configured search providers:

{
	"query": "reciprocal rank fusion hybrid search",
	"providers": ["brave", "exa"],
	"limit": 3
}

Results include source providers and merged rankings. If a provider fails, available results are returned with per-provider status.

Documentation

• Configuration: keys, manual client setup, providers, and spending controls.

• Search and read: retrieving pages and handling large results.

• Tool groups: choose which capabilities to expose.

• Deployment: remote HTTP access and operations.

• Contributing: build from source and run checks.

Each server instance shares one trust boundary. Do not use its result store for mutually untrusted clients. Spending caps depend on provider-reported usage, not estimated costs.

License and origins

MIT. Formerly named mcp-omnisearch; a maintained fork of Scott Spence's mcp-omnisearch. When upgrading this fork, rename OMNISEARCH_* settings to RETRIEVER_*, omnisearch:// resources to retriever://, and _meta.omnisearch to _meta.retriever. Preserve the old result store and spending ledger when moving to ~/.cache/mcp-retriever/results; Docker/MCPO clients must also change /omnisearch to /retriever.