mcp -searxng

This MCP server integrates SearXNG as a privacy-focused meta search layer. It aggregates results from multiple search engines via SearXNG, offering categories such as general, news, science, files, images, videos, and more, while supporting language filters, time range, and safe search levels. The server exposes a unified API that you can call through your MCP-enabled clients or tools like Dive Desktop to perform meta searches across configured engines. You can customize which SearXNG instances to query and adjust options such as language, categories, and safe search to fit your privacy and relevance requirements.

To use it, deploy the MCP server and connect it to your client (for example, via Dive Desktop or an MCP runner). The recommended runtime is to install it via npx as shown in the installation instructions, which ensures you’re running the MCP server with the official package. Once running, you can perform meta searches by invoking the web_search tool (or equivalent MCP action) with inputs such as query, page, language, categories, time_range, and safesearch. You can also configure multiple SearXNG instances for redundancy and failover, so searches continue to return results even if one instance is unavailable.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js (recommended LTS version)
• npm or npx available in your environment
• A running SearXNG instance(s) to query

Option A: Install automatically via Smithery (recommended for Claude Desktop)

1. Install via Smithery CLI:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @kevinwatt/mcp-server-searxng --client claude

Option B: Manual installation (local development)

1. Install globally from npm:

npm install -g @kevinwatt/mcp-server-searxng

2. Verify the server binary is available (or run from node_modules if installed locally):

mcp-server-searxng --version

3. Start the MCP server directly (example):

mcp-server-searxng

Notes:

• Ensure you have a SearXNG instance running and accessible (as described in the prerequisites).

Tips and considerations:

• You can configure multiple SearXNG endpoints for higher availability by adjusting SEARXNG_INSTANCES in the environment or by extending the mcp configuration to include multiple instances if supported by your MCP tooling.
• If you encounter SSL certificate issues in development, NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 can be used temporarily, but it is not recommended for production.
• The default user agent for SearXNG requests is set to M C P-SearXNG/1.0; you can override it with SEARXNG_USER_AGENT to customize headers.
• When running behind a proxy or corporate network, ensure your network allows outbound connections to your SearXNG instances and any engines your SearXNG configuration queries.
• See the SearXNG documentation for fine-grained control over engines, safety levels, and UI/language settings; changes can be made in the SearXNG settings.yml inside your instance.