mcp-searxng

A fork of mcp-searxng: an MCP server for querying a SearXNG instance from an MCP client.

This fork keeps the package name mcp-searxng, adds structured search-oriented tools, and disables arbitrary direct URL reads by default.

Repository: https://git.carpocratian.org/sibyl/mcp-searxng.git

What This Fork Does

• Exposes SearXNG-backed search tools over MCP
• Returns normalized structured search results by default
• Supports dedicated news, image, video, and research evidence tools
• Keeps web_url_read available only behind ENABLE_WEB_URL_READ=true
• Supports both STDIO and HTTP transport

Security Posture

The direct web_url_read tool is disabled by default in this fork.

That means:

• searxng_research still performs controlled internal reads of selected search results
• internal fetch-and-convert logic still exists for top search results
• arbitrary user-supplied URL reads are not exposed unless you opt in

To enable direct URL reads in a trusted deployment:

ENABLE_WEB_URL_READ=true

If you expose the HTTP transport on a network, also use the hardened HTTP settings described in CONFIGURATION.md.

Build

git clone https://git.carpocratian.org/sibyl/mcp-searxng.git
cd mcp-searxng
npm install
npm run build

Quick Start

Example MCP client configuration using the local build:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searxng": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-searxng/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "SEARXNG_URL": "https://search.example.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tools

searxng_web_search

General SearXNG search with structured normalized output by default.

Key inputs:

• query
• pageno
• categories
• engines
• time_range
• language
• response_mode

searxng_news_headlines

News-focused wrapper around SearXNG with news category and same-day recency defaults.

searxng_image_search

Image-focused wrapper around SearXNG.

searxng_video_search

Video-focused wrapper around SearXNG.

searxng_research

Searches first, reads selected result pages, chunks the Markdown, and returns ranked source evidence.

Key inputs:

• query
• max_results
• max_chunks
• max_chunks_per_source
• max_content_length
• chunk_target_chars
• chunk_overlap_chars

web_url_read

Disabled by default.

Enable it only for trusted deployments:

ENABLE_WEB_URL_READ=true

Transport

By default the server uses STDIO.

To enable HTTP transport:

MCP_HTTP_PORT=3000

HTTP mode exposes:

• POST /mcp
• GET /mcp
• DELETE /mcp
• GET /health

Configuration

The most important variables are:

• SEARXNG_URL
• ENABLE_WEB_URL_READ
• MCP_HTTP_PORT
• MCP_HTTP_HARDEN
• MCP_HTTP_AUTH_TOKEN
• MCP_HTTP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS
• MCP_SERVER_NAME

Full reference: CONFIGURATION.md

Development

npm test
npm run build

Notes

• This fork currently keeps the original package name.
• The MCP package identifier in package.json still reflects the upstream namespace.