Desearch MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server lets clients like Claude or Cursor use Desearch for real-time AI search, X search, web search, page extraction, and X trends.

Tools

The Desearch MCP server includes the following tools:

• AI Search (ai-search): Performs real-time AI Twitter and web searches with relevant links and summary. tools uses short source ids (web, twitter, arxiv, wikipedia, youtube, hackernews, reddit). Older labels such as Web Search are still accepted and sent to the API as the short id. Default is ["web", "twitter"].
• X Search (x-search): Real-time tweet search on X. Arguments: query (required), count (optional, default 20). Sort stays Top. Optional filters: user, start_date, end_date (YYYY-MM-DD), lang, verified, blue_verified, is_quote, is_video, is_image, min_retweets, min_replies, min_likes.
• Web Search (web-search): SERP-style web search. Arguments: query (required), start (optional pagination offset).
• Web Links Search (web-links-search): Web link search. Arguments: prompt (required), tools (optional, only web, default ["web"]; Web Search is accepted and rewritten to web), count (optional, 10–200). The links/web API rejects other sources, so they are not in the enum.
• Extract (extract): Read a public URL as text or HTML. Preferred over crawl. Arguments: url (required), format (optional, html or text), js (optional), wait (optional milliseconds).
• Web Crawl (web-crawl): Same arguments as extract, on the legacy /web/crawl route. The SDK marks webCrawl deprecated in favor of extract; this tool stays so that route remains reachable. Prefer extract for new integrations.
• X Links Search (x-links-search): AI search for X post links. Arguments: prompt (required), count (optional, 10–200).
• X Posts By URLs (x-posts-by-urls): Full posts for a list of URLs. Argument: urls (required).
• X Post By ID (x-post-by-id): One post by ID. Argument: id (required).
• X Posts By User (x-posts-by-user): Posts by a user. Arguments: user (required), query (optional), count (optional, 1–100).
• X Post Retweeters (x-post-retweeters): Users who retweeted a post. Arguments: id (required), cursor (optional).
• X User Posts (x-user-posts): A user's timeline. Arguments: username (required), cursor (optional).
• X User Replies (x-user-replies): Posts and replies by a user. Arguments: user (required), count (optional, 1–100), query (optional).
• X Post Replies (x-post-replies): Replies to a post. Arguments: post_id (required), count (optional, 1–100), query (optional).
• X Trends (x-trends): Trending topics for a location. Arguments: woeid (required), count (optional, 30–100).

The full SDK method → endpoint → MCP tool map is in docs/API_MCP_PARITY.md. Every public desearch-js 1.5 method is a tool. latestTweets was removed from the SDK (GET /twitter/latest in 1.0.1) and is not exposed.

Prerequisites 📋

• An Desearch API Key
• Node.js (v20.18.1 or higher; Node 22 is supported. Node 18 is not.)
• Claude Desktop installed
• Cursor IDE

Installation 🛠️

NPM Installation

The package name is desearch-mcp-server. The first npm publish of this tree is 0.1.2 (the registry still has 0.0.1). See CHANGELOG.md for the 0.0.1 → 0.1.2 migration. The stdio entry is the desearch-mcp-server bin (build/index.js), which requires DESEARCH_API_KEY.

npm install -g desearch-mcp-server

Or run it without a global install:

npx -y desearch-mcp-server

Cursor or Claude can start that bin directly:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "desearch": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["-y", "desearch-mcp-server"],
            "env": {
                "DESEARCH_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

command: "desearch-mcp-server" (no args) is the same entry after the global install above.

Using Smithery

To install the Desearch MCP server for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install desearch/desearch --client claude

Or for Cursor IDE:

npx -y @smithery/cli install desearch/desearch --client cursor

Windsurf

Windsurf's Cascade agent reads MCP servers from mcp_config.json under the mcpServers key. Open it from the Cascade panel: click the ... (Actions) menu, then Open MCP config file. Windsurf builds use ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json (on Windows, %USERPROFILE%\.codeium\windsurf\mcp_config.json). Newer builds may open ~/.config/devin/mcp_config.json instead (Windows: %APPDATA%\devin\mcp_config.json); edit whichever file that action opens.

Hosted server (no local install). Remote servers use serverUrl with headers:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "desearch": {
            "serverUrl": "https://mcp.desearch.ai/mcp",
            "headers": {
                "x-api-key": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

To keep the key out of the file, Windsurf can interpolate an environment variable: "x-api-key": "${env:DESEARCH_API_KEY}".

Local stdio alternative:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "desearch": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["-y", "desearch-mcp-server"],
            "env": {
                "DESEARCH_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

Save the file, then refresh the MCP servers list in Cascade.

Zed

Zed calls MCP servers context servers. Open your settings file with the zed: open settings file action (or use Settings → AI → MCP Servers → Add Server) and add a context_servers entry.

Hosted server:

{
    "context_servers": {
        "desearch": {
            "url": "https://mcp.desearch.ai/mcp",
            "headers": {
                "x-api-key": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

Local stdio alternative:

{
    "context_servers": {
        "desearch": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": ["-y", "desearch-mcp-server"],
            "env": {
                "DESEARCH_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

The server is ready when the dot next to desearch in Settings → AI → MCP Servers turns green ("Server is active").

Configuration ⚙️

1. Configure Cursor IDE to run the Desearch MCP server

Open Cursor IDE, access command palette Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P, and search for Open MCP Settings. Click on Add new global MCP server to open the mcp.json file.

2. Add the Desearch server configuration:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "desearch": {
            "command": "desearch-mcp-server",
            "env": {
                "DESEARCH_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

Replace your-api-key with your actual Desearch API key from console.desearch.ai/api-keys.

3. Restart Cursor IDE

For the changes to take effect:

1. Completely quit Cursor IDE
2. Start Cursor IDE again

1. Configure Claude Desktop to run the Desearch MCP server

Open the Claude Desktop app and enable Developer Mode from the top-left menu bar.

Once enabled, open Settings (also from the top-left menu bar) and navigate to the Developer Option, where you'll find the Edit Config button. Clicking it will open the claude_desktop_config.json file, allowing you to make the necessary edits.

OR (if you want to open claude_desktop_config.json from terminal)

For macOS:

1. Open your Claude Desktop config:

code ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

For Windows:

1. Open your Claude Desktop configuration:

code %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add the Desearch server configuration:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "desearch": {
            "command": "desearch-mcp-server",
            "env": {
                "DESEARCH_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

Replace your-api-key with your actual Desearch API key from console.desearch.ai/api-keys.

3. Restart Claude Desktop

For the changes to take effect:

1. Completely quit Claude Desktop
2. Start Claude Desktop again
3. You can verify the server by checking status in Settings > Developer > desearch

Remote Streamable HTTP

The same server can run over MCP Streamable HTTP for a remote client. Local stdio (desearch-mcp-server, Smithery) is unchanged and still reads DESEARCH_API_KEY from the environment.

Remote requests do not use that environment variable. Discovery does not need a key: initialize, notifications/initialized, ping, tools/list, prompts/list, resources/list, and resources/templates/list return 200 so a marketplace scanner can read the tool list. tools/call and every other method still require the caller's own Desearch API key, the same key from console.desearch.ai/api-keys:

• Authorization: Bearer <DESEARCH_API_KEY> (preferred)
• x-api-key: <DESEARCH_API_KEY>

A bare Authorization: <DESEARCH_API_KEY> value is also accepted. The key is not read from the query string. There is no shared server secret and no WWW-Authenticate challenge: the hosted process forwards the per-request key to the Desearch API only when a call needs it.

The MCP endpoint is POST /mcp. Responses are JSON (stateless Streamable HTTP). GET and DELETE on /mcp return 405 because the server does not keep a session or push server-to-client messages. GET /, GET /health, and GET /api/health are unauthenticated health checks.

Hosted endpoint

The public Streamable HTTP endpoint is https://mcp.desearch.ai/mcp. Listing the tools does not need a key. Send your Desearch API key on each tools/call in the x-api-key header. Authorization: Bearer <key> is also accepted. Use the key from console.desearch.ai/api-keys. The server does not read a key from the query string. Remote requests do not use a process-level DESEARCH_API_KEY.

Cursor, or any remote MCP client:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "desearch": {
            "url": "https://mcp.desearch.ai/mcp",
            "headers": {
                "x-api-key": "your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

Use with Claude (custom connector)

Desearch is not in the Claude Connectors Directory yet. You can add the hosted server as a custom connector with your Desearch API key.

Sources: Custom remote MCP connectors and connector authentication. Request-header authentication is a beta feature in Claude.

Claude.ai / Claude Desktop (organization admin)

1. Open Organization settings > Connectors.
2. Select Add, then Custom. If asked for the connector type, choose Web.
3. Server URL: https://mcp.desearch.ai/mcp
4. Sign-in option: No sign-in.
5. Under Request headers, add x-api-key with your Desearch API key as the value.
6. Select Add.

The header value is stored once and shared by everyone in the organization who uses the connector.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http desearch https://mcp.desearch.ai/mcp \
  --header "x-api-key: YOUR_DESEARCH_API_KEY"

Run locally

npm install
npm run build
npm run start:http

This listens on 0.0.0.0:3000 (PORT and HOST override that). MCP_TRANSPORT=http is the same as --http.

curl -sS http://127.0.0.1:3000/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer your-api-key' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-03-26","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"smoke","version":"0.0.1"}}}'

Cursor (or any remote MCP client):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "desearch": {
            "url": "http://127.0.0.1:3000/mcp",
            "headers": {
                "Authorization": "Bearer your-api-key"
            }
        }
    }
}

The image default is stdio MCP (node build/index.js). Registries such as Glama start the container and speak MCP on stdin/stdout, so the image does not pass --http unless you override it. Stdio requires DESEARCH_API_KEY. Smithery does not use this image command; smithery.yaml starts node build/index.js and injects DESEARCH_API_KEY itself.

Streamable HTTP is an override. Replace the command with --http, or set MCP_TRANSPORT=http and keep the default command. The image still exposes port 3000 for that mode.

docker build -t desearch-mcp .
# stdio (image default)
docker run --rm -e DESEARCH_API_KEY=your-api-key -i desearch-mcp
# Streamable HTTP
docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 desearch-mcp node build/index.js --http
# same HTTP mode via env, without replacing the command
docker run --rm -e MCP_TRANSPORT=http -p 3000:3000 desearch-mcp

Deploy on Vercel

Vercel fits this server because the handler is stateless and answers each JSON-RPC call in one response. vercel.json builds the project, serves POST /mcp, and allows tool calls up to 60 seconds (Orbit searches run about 30 seconds). Hobby plans cap function duration lower than that, so AI Search tool calls need a plan that allows at least 60 seconds. initialize and tools/list are short either way.

No server-side Desearch API key is required in the Vercel project. After deploy, the endpoint is:

https://<project>.vercel.app/mcp

https://mcp.desearch.ai/mcp is the public hostname. This repo does not create DNS records. Clients send x-api-key, or Authorization: Bearer <key>.

The same node build/index.js --http process is the fallback if you would rather run a long-lived Node host instead of Vercel. The Docker image defaults to stdio; pass --http or set MCP_TRANSPORT=http to serve Streamable HTTP from it.

Troubleshooting 🔧

Common Issues

1. Server Not Found

   • Check Claude or Cursor Desktop configuration syntax
   • Ensure Node.js is installed

2. API Key Issues

   • Confirm your DESEARCH_API_KEY is valid
   • Check the DESEARCH_API_KEY is correctly set in the Cursor or Claude Desktop config
   • Verify that there are no spaces around the API key
   • For the remote HTTP server, send Authorization: Bearer <key> or x-api-key. A hosted DESEARCH_API_KEY environment variable is not used for those requests.

3. Connection Issues

   • Restart Claude Desktop or Cursor IDE completely
   • Check Claude Desktop logs:

   # macOS
   tail -n 50 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp*.log
   
   # Windows
   type "%APPDATA%\Claude\logs\mcp*.log"