Web Search — Claude Code MCP server: what it does, how to install
Multi-engine search and clean Markdown retrieval for coding agents without API keys. Handy for fetching documentation and reading web pages directly in context.
claude mcp add web-search -- uvx websearch-skillWhat Web Search does
The tool queries engines like Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex via ddgs. It merges and deduplicates results with Reciprocal Rank Fusion. Fetched pages become clean Markdown, paginated so large documents do not exhaust the prompt context.
Everything runs locally via Python 3.11+ and uv. Setup needs no accounts. The package also includes specialized queries for arXiv papers and GitHub repositories alongside optional self-hosted SearXNG integration.
Aggressive bot protections will halt retrieval without dedicated proxy solutions.
What it helps with
- search web pages across multiple engines without API keys
- extract article contents into clean paginated Markdown
- query GitHub repositories and inspect metadata
- find academic preprints directly on arXiv
Example prompts for the agent
- Search for the latest Python release notes and fetch the summary
- Find arXiv papers about transformer attention mechanisms
- Query GitHub for repositories related to SearXNG
How to install Web Search
Platform CLI
claude mcp add web-search -- uvx websearch-skilluvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from websearch-skill <command>
Platform CLI
codex mcp add hec-ovi-web-search -- uvx websearch-skilluvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from websearch-skill <command>
Config file
{
"mcpServers": {
"hec-ovi-web-search": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"websearch-skill"
]
}
}
}uvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from websearch-skill <command>
Config file
{
"servers": {
"hec-ovi-web-search": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"websearch-skill"
]
}
}
}uvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from websearch-skill <command>
Platform CLI
gemini mcp add hec-ovi-web-search uvx websearch-skilluvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from websearch-skill <command>
Step by step, with commands for each platform: How to add an MCP server to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI and more
Questions about Web Search
How to install Web Search in Claude Code?
Run claude mcp add web-search -- uvx websearch-skill in your terminal.
What does Web Search do?
It lets your coding assistant query search engines and read web pages as Markdown without external API tokens.
What prerequisites are required?
You need Python 3.11 or newer and the uv tool installed on your machine.
