MCP Web Research Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for web research.

Bring real-time info into Claude and easily research any topic.

Features

• Google search integration
• Webpage content extraction
• Research session tracking (list of visited pages, search queries, etc.)
• Screenshot capture

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18 (includes npm and npx)
• Claude Desktop app

Installation

First, ensure you've downloaded and installed the Claude Desktop app and you have npm installed.

Next, add this entry to your claude_desktop_config.json (on Mac, found at ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webresearch": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@mzxrai/mcp-webresearch"]
    }
  }
}

This config allows Claude Desktop to automatically start the web research MCP server when needed.

Usage

Simply start a chat with Claude and send a prompt that would benefit from web research. If you'd like a prebuilt prompt customized for deeper web research, you can use the agentic-research prompt that we provide through this package. Access that prompt in Claude Desktop by clicking the Paperclip icon in the chat input and then selecting Choose an integration → webresearch → agentic-research.

<img src="https://i.ibb.co/N6Y3C0q/Screenshot-2024-12-05-at-11-01-27-PM.png" alt="Example screenshot of web research" width="400"/>

Tools

1. search_google

   • Performs Google searches and extracts results
   • Arguments: { query: string }

2. visit_page

   • Visits a webpage and extracts its content
   • Arguments: { url: string, takeScreenshot?: boolean }

3. take_screenshot

   • Takes a screenshot of the current page
   • No arguments required

Prompts

agentic-research

A guided research prompt that helps Claude conduct thorough web research. The prompt instructs Claude to:

• Start with broad searches to understand the topic landscape
• Prioritize high-quality, authoritative sources
• Iteratively refine the research direction based on findings
• Keep you informed and let you guide the research interactively
• Always cite sources with URLs

Resources

We expose two things as MCP resources: (1) captured webpage screenshots, and (2) the research session.

Screenshots

When you take a screenshot, it's saved as an MCP resource. You can access captured screenshots in Claude Desktop via the Paperclip icon.

Research Session

The server maintains a research session that includes:

• Search queries
• Visited pages
• Extracted content
• Screenshots
• Timestamps

Suggestions

For the best results, if you choose not to use the agentic-research prompt when doing your research, it may be helpful to suggest high-quality sources for Claude to use when researching general topics. For example, you could prompt news today from reuters or AP instead of news today.

Problems

This is very much pre-alpha code. And it is also AIGC, so expect bugs.

If you run into issues, it may be helpful to check Claude Desktop's MCP logs:

tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp*.log

Development

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Build the project
pnpm build

# Watch for changes
pnpm watch

# Run in development mode
pnpm dev

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18
• Playwright (automatically installed as a dependency)

Verified Platforms

• [x] macOS
• [ ] Linux

License

MIT

Author

mzxrai