google-surf-mcp

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npm version npm downloads ci google-surf-mcp MCP server

Demo only. Actual searches run headless by default (no visible browser). Set SURF_HEADLESS=false to make Chrome visible like in the clip above.

Google search MCP. No API key. Just works.

One MCP replaces three: search + URL fetcher + academic-paper extractor.

• ✅ Actually works (tested 6 free Google search MCPs, all failed)
• ✅ Search + URL + academic PDF extract in one MCP (replaces the search MCP + fetch MCP + academic-search MCP combo)
• ✅ Academic PDFs extracted inline: arxiv, biorxiv, Nature, OpenReview, NeurIPS, JMLR, PMLR, Springer, PubMed (via PMC)
• ✅ search_extract defaults to abstract mode (~1500 chars/result, token-cheap), mode="full" for whole bodies
• ✅ Sponsored ads + knowledge panels dropped (geometric verification, not just text matching)
• ✅ CAPTCHA recovery in 4 modes: OS notification (default) / SURF_HEADLESS=false / SURF_REMOTE_DEBUG / SURF_CLOUD_MODE (fail-fast)
• ✅ No API key, no proxies, no solver

5 tools: search / search_parallel / extract / search_extract / health

What

Plug it into any MCP client and you get Google search as a tool.

No CAPTCHA solver. When CAPTCHA fires on any tool, a Chrome window opens for a human to solve. Each solve preserves the profile's reputation with Google.

First call auto-bootstraps the warm profile. Designed for local use. For headless / serverless environments set SURF_CLOUD_MODE=true (fail-fast on CAPTCHA, worker pool disabled).

Numbers

	result
sequential	~1.5s/query (first call ~4s, includes setup)
parallel x4	~1.5s wall (first call ~9s, includes pool warm)
parallel x10	~4.5s wall
search_extract x5 (abstract, default)	~3s wall
search_extract x5 (full)	~5s wall (search + 5 parallel extracts)

Measured on a workstation with a 1Gb/s connection.

Stack

• Playwright + persistent Chrome profile
• playwright-extra stealth as a cascade fallback tier
• Multi-strategy SERP parser + geometric verification (drops sponsored / knowledge_panel / related)
• @llamaindex/liteparse for PDF text extraction (PDFium spatial parsing, optional OCR); Mozilla Readability + Turndown for HTML
• Resource-blocked images / media / fonts for speed
• Auto-bootstrap on first call; pool falls back to single-context after repeated warm failures
• Self-healing: runtime parser-strategy reorder (deterministic) + daily cron repair PR (synthesis → optional LLM → triple-gate validation, human review)

Install

Requires Node 18+ and Google Chrome (or Chromium) on the system.

npx google-surf-mcp   # actual MCP - register in client config

First tool call auto-bootstraps the warm profile (you may see Chrome open briefly).

Or local clone:

git clone https://github.com/HarimxChoi/google-surf-mcp
cd google-surf-mcp
npm install

If auto-bootstrap fails (rare), run it manually:

npm run bootstrap

Override paths if needed:

CHROME_PATH=/path/to/chrome SURF_TZ=America/New_York npm run bootstrap

Use with Claude Code

Paste this into your ~/.claude.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-surf": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "google-surf-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Code. Done. search, search_parallel, extract, search_extract, health are now available.

For other MCP clients, use the same JSON shape in their config file.

Local clone variant:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-surf": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/abs/path/to/google-surf-mcp/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

• search(query, limit?) - single query, ~1.5s. Returns title / url / snippet. Sponsored ads + knowledge-panel dropped (response includes dropped count + dropped_reasons). Results cached 24h (SURF_CACHE_TTL_SEARCH_MS=0 to bypass).
• search_parallel(queries[], limit?) - pool of 4, max 10 queries per call.
• extract(url, max_chars?, mode?) - fetch a URL, return article content.
  • mode="full" (default): whole body. HTML via Readability, PDFs via liteparse (spatial parsing, multi-column reading order).
  • mode="abstract": ~1500-char survey (PDF page 1 or HTML meta description). Triage relevance before paying for full text.
  • mode="metadata": PDF page count only.
  • Response: content, title, excerpt, length, is_pdf, page_count, extraction_quality. Failures return { error }, never throw.
• search_extract(query, limit?, max_chars?, mode?) - search + parallel extract in one call. Default mode="abstract" returns SERP enriched with ~1500-char summaries (cheap triage). Use mode="full" when you actually need the article texts (slower, more tokens).
• health() - server status. Response: cascade / pool (warmFailures + fallback) / rateLimiter / cache / telemetry / selfHealing (current strategy order + stats) / config. Call it if searches start failing — pool.fallback=true or rising cascade.totalCaptchas are the usual culprits.

Env vars

var	default	notes
CHROME_PATH	auto-detected	absolute path to Chrome binary
SURF_PROFILE_ROOT	~/.google-surf-mcp	where the warm profile lives
SURF_LOCALE	en-US	browser locale
SURF_TZ	system tz	e.g. America/New_York
SURF_HEADLESS	true	set false to run Chrome visibly (demos / debugging). When false, CAPTCHA recovery skips the OS notification (user is already watching).
SURF_REMOTE_DEBUG	false	set true on a headless server with remote DevTools. CAPTCHA path emits the DevTools port and throws instead of spawning a window; attach chrome://inspect from a local machine over SSH port-forward to solve.
SURF_IDLE_CLOSE_MS	30000	idle ms before closing the sequential ctx and pool. 0 disables idle auto-close. Lower = faster cleanup, higher = warmer cache for spaced-out calls.
SURF_ALLOW_PRIVATE	false	set true to allow extract to fetch private/loopback addresses (localhost, 127.0.0.1, 10.x, 192.168.x, 169.254.x, etc). Default blocks them as an SSRF guard.
SURF_EXTRACT_MAX_CHARS	8000	default extract truncation (200–50000); per-call max_chars still overrides
SURF_EXTRACT_OCR	false	OCR scanned/image PDFs via Tesseract (slower; off by default)
SURF_CLOUD_MODE	false	headless/serverless mode: TLS bypass + --no-sandbox + --disable-dev-shm-usage + worker pool disabled + fail-fast on CAPTCHA
SURF_CASCADE_DISABLED	false	pin a single stealth mode (chosen by SURF_USE_STEALTH) instead of the 3-tier auto-cascade
SURF_USE_STEALTH	true	initial stealth tier — only consulted when SURF_CASCADE_DISABLED=true
SURF_HUMANLIKE_MODE	off	off / background (fire-and-forget after returning results) / inline (await before returning, slower) — opt-in humanlike browsing
SURF_RATE_LIMIT_PER_MIN	10	internal cap on Google-facing requests per minute
SURF_CACHE_TTL_SEARCH_MS	86400000	search cache TTL (24h); 0 disables caching
SURF_CACHE_MAX_ENTRIES	1000	LRU cap per cache namespace
SURF_CACHE_ROOT	<profile>/cache	cache directory
SURF_INSECURE_TLS	=SURF_CLOUD_MODE	--ignore-certificate-errors (auto-on in cloud mode)
SURF_NO_SANDBOX	=SURF_CLOUD_MODE	--no-sandbox (auto-on in cloud mode)
SURF_TELEMETRY	false	set true to enable jsonl event logging (search outcomes, cache hits/misses, tool errors, parser staleness) under {SURF_TELEMETRY_ROOT}. Designed as the input feed for the self-healing pipeline. Off by default.
SURF_TELEMETRY_ROOT	<profile>/telemetry	directory for jsonl telemetry files. UTC-dated one file per day (YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl).
SURF_SELF_HEALING	true	per-strategy outcome tracking + persisted reordering. Healing must win by 3 outcomes before reorder kicks in, so single-call flapping is impossible. Set false to pin the default strategy order.
SURF_SELF_HEALING_FILE	<profile>/.heal/strategy-order.json	persistence path for healing state. Atomic tmp+rename writes; debounced 5s.
SURF_LLM_HEAL	false	opt-in for LLM-assisted selector repair in the workflow-only repairWithLLM helper. Off by default → no third-party LLM request ever fires. When true, requires ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (your own); the package never ships a maintainer key.
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	—	your Anthropic key. Read only when SURF_LLM_HEAL=true. The runtime self-healing in SURF_SELF_HEALING is deterministic and never reads this variable.

Troubleshooting

• CAPTCHA in 4 modes (picked automatically from env):
  • default (local desktop): OS notification fires, headed Chrome opens, human solves, call retries
  • SURF_HEADLESS=false: headed Chrome opens, no notification (user is already watching)
  • SURF_REMOTE_DEBUG=true: DevTools port + instructions printed, attach chrome://inspect locally to solve
  • SURF_CLOUD_MODE=true: fail-fast with CAPTCHA_REQUIRED error
• Headed Chrome opens to a plain search box instead of CAPTCHA: just type any query in the box and press Enter. Subsequent calls work.
• "Chrome not found": install Chrome or set CHROME_PATH.
• Stale selectors: two-layer mitigation — runtime per-strategy reorder (SURF_SELF_HEALING, deterministic) + daily cron that opens draft PRs with candidate fixes (SURF_LLM_HEAL optional, human review required, never auto-merged).
• Searches feel slower than the Numbers table: check health().pool.fallback. true means the worker pool gave up after 3 warm failures and is using a single context. Usually fixed by npm run bootstrap to refresh the seed profile.
• SSRF: extract blocks localhost, private IPs, AWS metadata by default. Set SURF_ALLOW_PRIVATE=true to allow them.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT