# Search Cli > Multi-provider web search CLI for AI agents — Brave, Serper, Exa, Jina, Firecrawl, Perplexity, xAI in one Rust binary - **Type:** MCP server - **Install:** `agentstack add mcp-paperfoot-search-cli` - **Verified:** Pending review - **Seller:** [paperfoot](https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/paperfoot) - **Installs:** 0 - **Category:** [Web & Browser](https://agentstack.voostack.com/c/web-and-browser) - **Latest version:** 0.1.0 - **License:** MIT - **Upstream author:** [paperfoot](https://github.com/paperfoot) - **Source:** https://github.com/paperfoot/search-cli ## Install ```sh agentstack add mcp-paperfoot-search-cli ``` Requires the [AgentStack CLI](https://agentstack.voostack.com/docs/cli). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent. ## About # Search CLI **One binary, 11 providers, 14 modes. The web search tool your AI agent is missing.** [](https://github.com/paperfoot/search-cli/stargazers)    [](https://x.com/longevityboris) [](https://crates.io/crates/agent-search) [](https://crates.io/crates/agent-search) [](LICENSE) [](https://github.com/paperfoot/search-cli/actions) --- A single Rust binary that aggregates Brave, Serper, Exa, Jina, Firecrawl, Tavily, SerpApi, Perplexity, xAI, and more into one unified search interface. Designed from day one for AI agents -- structured JSON output, semantic exit codes, auto-JSON when piped, and parallel fan-out across providers in under 2 seconds. [Install](#install) | [How It Works](#how-it-works) | [Features](#features) | [Providers](#providers) | [Contributing](#contributing) ## Why This Exists Every search API is good at something different. Brave has its own 35-billion page index. Serper gives you raw Google results plus Scholar, Patents, and Places. Exa does neural/semantic search. Perplexity gives AI-synthesized answers with citations. Jina reads any URL into clean markdown. Firecrawl renders JavaScript-heavy pages. xAI searches X/Twitter. You shouldn't have to wire up each one separately, handle their different response formats, manage rate limits, or figure out which provider to use for which query type. `search` does all of that for you -- routes your query to the right combination automatically, fans out in parallel, deduplicates results, and gives you a single clean response. ```bash search "CRISPR gene therapy breakthroughs" ``` That's it — a plain `search "query"` runs a general multi-provider web search and merges the results in under 2 seconds. You stay in control of routing: pick a mode with `-m` or specific providers with `-p` (run `search agent-info` for the full map). The CLI never guesses intent from your query. ## Install **Cargo (recommended):** ```bash cargo install agent-search ``` **Homebrew:** ```bash brew tap 199-biotechnologies/tap brew install search-cli ``` **One-liner (macOS / Linux):** ```bash curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paperfoot/search-cli/master/install.sh | sh ``` **From source:** ```bash cargo install --git https://github.com/paperfoot/search-cli ``` Binary size is ~6 MB. Startup is ~2 ms. Memory is ~5 MB. No Python, no Node, no Docker. ## Quick Start ```bash # Set your API keys (any combination works -- even just one) search config set keys.brave YOUR_BRAVE_KEY search config set keys.serper YOUR_SERPER_KEY search config set keys.exa YOUR_EXA_KEY # Or use environment variables export SEARCH_KEYS_BRAVE=YOUR_KEY export SEARCH_KEYS_EXA=YOUR_KEY # Search search "your query here" ``` ## How It Works ``` ┌─────────────┐ │ Your Query │ └──────┬──────┘ │ ┌──────▼──────┐ │ Classify │ regex-based intent detection └──────┬──────┘ │ ┌────────────┼────────────┐ ▼ ▼ ▼ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ │ Brave │ │ Serper │ │ Exa │ parallel fan-out └────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘ via tokio::JoinSet │ │ │ └────────────┼────────────┘ │ ┌──────▼──────┐ │ Dedup & │ URL normalization │ Merge │ across providers └──────┬──────┘ │ ┌───────────┴───────────┐ ▼ ▼ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │ JSON │ │ Table │ │ (piped) │ │ (terminal) │ └────────────┘ └────────────┘ ``` 1. **Parse** -- Clap parses your query, mode, provider filter, and output preferences 2. **Classify** -- If mode is `auto`, regex-based intent classifier picks the right mode 3. **Route** -- Mode determines which providers to query (or you override with `-p`) 4. **Fan out** -- `tokio::JoinSet` fires all providers in parallel with per-provider timeouts 5. **Collect** -- Results stream in as providers respond (no waiting for the slowest) 6. **Dedup** -- URL normalization removes duplicates across providers 7. **Render** -- JSON envelope when piped, colored terminal table when interactive ## Features ### 14 Search Modes Pick a mode explicitly with `-m` (default is `general`): | Mode | What it does | Providers used | |------|-------------|----------------| | `general` | Broad web search (default) | Brave + Serper + Exa + Jina + Tavily + Perplexity | | `news` | Breaking news, current events | Brave News + Serper News + Tavily + Perplexity | | `academic` | Research papers, studies | Exa + Serper + Tavily + Perplexity | | `people` | LinkedIn profiles, bios | Exa | | `deep` | Maximum coverage | Brave (LLM Context) + Exa + Serper + Tavily + Perplexity + xAI | | `scholar` | Google Scholar | Serper + SerpApi | | `patents` | Patent search | Serper | | `images` | Image search | Serper | | `places` | Local businesses, maps | Serper | | `extract` | Full text from a URL | Stealth -> Jina -> Firecrawl -> Browserless | | `scrape` | Page scraping | Stealth -> Jina -> Firecrawl -> Browserless | | `similar` | Find similar pages to a URL | Exa | | `social` | X/Twitter social search | xAI (Grok) | ### Agent-First Design Built for Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, [OpenClaw](https://github.com/openclaw), and any AI agent that can shell out to a command. ```bash # Discover capabilities programmatically search agent-info # Structured JSON with metadata search "query" --json # { # "status": "success", # "query": "...", # "mode": "general", # "results": [...], # "metadata": { # "elapsed_ms": 1542, # "result_count": 10, # "providers_queried": ["brave", "serper", "exa"] # } # } ``` **Auto-JSON:** Output is automatically JSON when piped to another program. Human-readable tables when you're in a terminal. **Semantic exit codes:** | Code | Meaning | Agent action | |------|---------|-------------| | 0 | Success | Process results | | 1 | Runtime error | Retry might help | | 2 | Config error | Fix configuration | | 3 | Auth missing | Set API key | | 4 | Rate limited | Back off and retry | ### Usage Examples ```bash # Default general web search (no mode = general; no intent guessing) search "quantum computing advances" search search -q "who is the CEO of Anthropic" -m people search search -q "CRISPR research papers" -m academic # Force a specific mode search search -q "transformer architectures" -m academic search search -q "Sam Altman" -m people search search -q "AI startups 2026" -m news search search -q "BRCA1 gene patent" -m patents # Search X (Twitter) only search --x "AI agents" # Pick specific providers search search -q "machine learning" -p exa search search -q "rust programming" -p brave,serper # Control output search "query" --json | jq '.results[].url' search "query" -c 20 # 20 results search "query" 2>/dev/null # suppress diagnostics ``` ## Providers | Provider | What it does | Best for | |----------|-------------|----------| | **[Brave](https://brave.com/search/api/)** | Independent 35B-page index + LLM Context API | Web search, news, RAG-ready content | | **[Serper](https://serper.dev/)** | Raw Google SERP + specialist endpoints | Scholar, patents, images, places | | **[Exa](https://exa.ai/)** | Neural/semantic search, category filters | Research papers, people search, similar sites | | **[Jina](https://jina.ai/)** | Fast URL-to-markdown, 500 RPM free tier | Reading article content, quick extraction | | **[Firecrawl](https://firecrawl.dev/)** | JavaScript rendering, structured extraction | Dynamic pages, SPAs, data extraction | | **[Tavily](https://tavily.com/)** | General + deep search, research-focused | Broad coverage, research queries | | **[SerpApi](https://serpapi.com/)** | 80+ engines: Google, Bing, YouTube, Baidu | Scholar, multi-engine coverage | | **[Perplexity](https://perplexity.ai/)** | AI-powered answers with citations (Sonar Pro) | Complex queries, synthesized answers | | **Browserless** | Cloud browser for Cloudflare/JS-heavy pages | Anti-bot bypass, dynamic rendering | | **Stealth** | Built-in anti-bot scraper | Protected pages, no API key needed | | **[xAI](https://x.ai/)** | X/Twitter search via Grok AI | Tweets, trending topics, social sentiment | ## Configuration Config file lives at `~/.config/search/config.toml` (Linux) or `~/Library/Application Support/search/config.toml` (macOS). ```bash search config show # View current config (keys masked) search config check # Health check all providers search config set K V # Set a value ``` Environment variables override the config file, so a freshly-exported or CI-injected key always wins over stale local config. Two accepted forms: ```bash # Standard per-provider variables (recommended): export BRAVE_API_KEY=your-key export SERPER_API_KEY=your-key export EXA_API_KEY=your-key # ...also PERPLEXITY_API_KEY, JINA_API_KEY, FIRECRAWL_API_KEY, TAVILY_API_KEY, # SERPAPI_API_KEY, BROWSERLESS_API_KEY, XAI_API_KEY, PARALLEL_API_KEY # Or the SEARCH_KEYS_ prefixed form: export SEARCH_KEYS_BRAVE=your-key ``` Precedence (highest first): `_API_KEY` env → `SEARCH_KEYS_*` env → config file. ## Updating ```bash search update # Self-update from GitHub releases search update --check # Check without installing ``` ## Building from Source ```bash git clone https://github.com/paperfoot/search-cli cd search-cli cargo build --release # Binary at target/release/search ``` ## Contributing Contributions are welcome. See [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for guidelines. ## License [MIT](LICENSE) --- Built by [Boris Djordjevic](https://github.com/longevityboris) at [199 Biotechnologies](https://github.com/199-biotechnologies) | [Paperfoot AI](https://paperfoot.ai) **If this is useful to you:** [](https://github.com/paperfoot/search-cli/stargazers)    [](https://x.com/longevityboris) ## Source & license This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code. - **Author:** [paperfoot](https://github.com/paperfoot) - **Source:** [paperfoot/search-cli](https://github.com/paperfoot/search-cli) - **License:** MIT Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above. ## Pricing - **Free** — Free ## Security capabilities Automated source analysis of v0.1.0 — what this tool can access: - **Network access:** yes - **Filesystem access:** no - **Shell / process execution:** no - **Environment & secrets:** no - **Dynamic code execution:** no *"Yes" means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it is unsafe.* ## Versions - **0.1.0** — security scan: flagged — Imported from the upstream source. ## Links - Listing page: https://agentstack.voostack.com/l/mcp-paperfoot-search-cli - Seller: https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/paperfoot - Browse the marketplace: https://agentstack.voostack.com/browse --- Listed on AgentStack — the marketplace for AI agent skills and MCP servers. Every listing is security-reviewed. Creators keep 70%.