Search that shows its work MCP server

search

A self-hosted MCP server for web search that reports how much of each answer to believe

A search tool fails in ways that look exactly like success. An engine answers with somebody else's subject. A page returns text that is an anti-bot shield. Sixteen sources turn out to be two engines counted eight times. None of that raises an error, and the model on the other end builds on it.

This server's job is to make those cases distinguishable, in fields you can branch on. It runs on your machine, over your own metasearch instance, with your own model key — or none at all.

🔧 Tools

Full argument reference, response shapes and failure modes: HOWTO-CALL.md.

📦 Install

From an open repository page to a working answer. Nothing is assumed to be on your disk already:

git clone https://github.com/AG-Bureau/mcp-search
cd mcp-search
cp .env.example .env
echo "SEARXNG_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" >> .env
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f wiring/expose-localhost.yml up -d --build
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8081/healthz

The fourth line is not decoration. Without a value in SEARXNG_SECRET the very next command refuses — and that refusal is deliberate: with no key of its own the metasearch does not fail, it comes up with a publicly known one from its image template, silently.

The overlay publishes the port on loopback only. A published container port does not go through the host firewall's usual chain, so exposing it more widely is a separate, deliberate step — see Deployment.

Two transports

MCP has two, and they answer different questions. HTTP — the commands above — is for a server that is already running somewhere. stdio is the protocol's default: the client starts the server as a process and talks to it through the pipes, which is how most desktop clients and wrappers work.

python adapter/server.py --stdio        # or MCP_TRANSPORT=stdio

One JSON-RPC object per line in, one answer per line out. The mode is chosen explicitly and never guessed from whether a terminal is attached — that sign merely sits next to the subject, and one day it answers for a case nobody meant.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.