Google Surf MCP runs on your own machine — the client starts it, so there is no endpoint to ping. 454 installs a week from npm. Last commit 30 Oct 2026.
Web, academic and code search with graph RAG, data lineage, ontology and cross-project schema links.
We read the source, 2 d ago · rules 995398eba69f
What this server is able to do. For an MCP server this is often the job itself — a terminal server runs commands because that is what it is for. Listed so you know what you are plugging in, not as an accusation.
const p = spawn(cmd, args, {
Is this your server and something here is wrong? Tell us — corrections are free and do not require a plan.
We found places where it runs commands, builds paths or queries from values it is given. None of that is a flaw by itself — it becomes one when the code changes, and code changes quietly between releases. We re-read it on every one.
This server runs on your own machine — install it with the package manager and the client starts it for you. Package name taken from the official registry entry.
claude mcp add google-surf-mcp -- npx -y google-surf-mcp
{
"mcpServers": {
"google-surf-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"google-surf-mcp"
]
}
}
}
[mcp_servers.google-surf-mcp]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "google-surf-mcp"]
{
"mcpServers": {
"google-surf-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"google-surf-mcp"
]
}
}
}
{
"servers": {
"google-surf-mcp": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"google-surf-mcp"
]
}
}
}
Optional settings from the registry entry, left out of the block above:
SEARCH_API (SearchApi API key. Required only for SearchApi primary or fallback modes), SURF_SEARCH_PROVIDER (Provider for search and search_parallel: browser, searchapi, or fallback. Defaults to browser), SURF_SCHOLAR_PROVIDER (Provider for scholar_search: browser, searchapi, or fallback. Defaults to browser), SURF_BROWSER_ENGINE (Browser engine: auto, native, or playwright. Auto uses one hidden native Chrome broker shared across local MCP sessions), CHROME_PATH (Absolute path to the Chrome binary. Auto-detected on Windows/macOS/Linux when omitted), SURF_PROFILE_ROOT (Directory for the warm Chrome profile. Defaults to ~/.google-surf-mcp), SURF_RESEARCH (Enable local project memory and hybrid retrieval. Defaults to true), SURF_RETRIEVAL_MODE (Shared route for search and search_parallel: live or hybrid. Defaults to hybrid), SURF_RESEARCH_ROOT (Embedded SurrealDB data directory. Defaults to <profile>/research), SURF_RESEARCH_VECTOR_MODEL (Local model for HNSW retrieval and shared reranking. Defaults to Xenova/multilingual-e5-small; use off to disable), SURF_RESEARCH_VECTOR_LOW_MEMORY (Disable ONNX CPU memory arena and memory pattern. Defaults to true), SURF_RESEARCH_VECTOR_THREADS (ONNX intra-op thread count from 1 to 16. Defaults to 4), SURF_RESEARCH_REPO_AUTO (Sparse-index at most one eligible small GitHub repository per search call. Defaults to true), SURF_RESEARCH_REPO_AUTO_MAX_MB (Maximum searchable repository source-text size in MB. Assets are excluded. Defaults to 20), SURF_RESEARCH_REPO_AUTO_MAX_FILES (Maximum repository source file count for automatic indexing. Defaults to 2000), SURF_RESEARCH_BROKER_IDLE_MS (Shared research broker idle lifetime in milliseconds. Defaults to 60000), SURF_RESEARCH_READ_CONCURRENCY (Maximum concurrent research broker reads. Defaults to 4), SURF_RESEARCH_QUERY_TIMEOUT_MS (Timeout per embedded SurrealDB query in milliseconds. Defaults to 120000; timed-out retrieval lanes are reported as partial), GITHUB_TOKEN (Optional token that raises GitHub API limits for repository inspection), SURF_LOCALE (Browser locale, e.g. en-US), SURF_TZ (IANA timezone, e.g. America/New_York. Defaults to system timezone), SURF_HEADLESS (Controls Playwright extraction, compatibility, and recovery paths. Native search hides normal system Chrome and shows it only for CAPTCHA recovery), SURF_IDLE_CLOSE_MS (Idle ms before closing the sequential ctx and pool. 0 disables idle auto-close. Defaults to 30000), SURF_ALLOW_PRIVATE (Set to 'true' to allow extract on private/loopback addresses (localhost, 10.x, 192.168.x, 169.254.x, etc). Default blocks them as an SSRF guard), SURF_LLM_HEAL (Enable the optional workflow-only LLM selector repair path. Defaults to false), SURF_LLM_PROVIDER (LLM selector repair provider: anthropic or orcarouter. Defaults to anthropic), SURF_LLM_MODEL (Optional model override. OrcaRouter defaults to orcarouter/auto), ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (Anthropic API key for optional LLM-assisted selector repair), ORCAROUTER_API_KEY (OrcaRouter API key for optional LLM-assisted selector repair).
Google video search across websites, with titles, links and durations. Paid FlashData API.
AI assistant with RAG, web search, filesystem and memory. MCP sub-agent for Claude Code.
Live web access for agents: scrape, SERP search, crawl/map, 100+ collectors, datasets, proxies.
Scrape Google search results with SERP data, ads, and knowledge panels
Real-time flight search: one-way and round-trip fares across date ranges, with price verdicts.
Web search with full-page content and grounded answers from the Staan API.
Neural web search, code context, and page crawling through the Exa API.
Search Google Scholar for academic papers, citations, and author profiles.
Answers built from our own checks of this server.