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 --- THIS FORK FIXES THIS --- NOW NO LONGER GETTING CAPTCHA BLOCKED
• Webpage content extraction
• Research session tracking (list of visited pages, search queries, etc.)
• Screenshot capture

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

Verified Platforms

• macOS
• Linux
• Windows

License

MIT

Author

mzxrai

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@latest"]
    }
  }
}

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.

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.

Requirements

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