Google Surf MCP
Google Surf MCP is an MCP server that adds web browsing tools to AI assistants such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor. Web, academic and code search with graph RAG, data lineage, ontology and cross-project schema links. It has 291 GitHub stars, is released under the MIT license and runs locally with npx -y google-surf-mcp.
- Needs API key
- Web & browsing
- MIT
- Actively maintained
Install Google Surf MCP
Generated from the server's MCP registry entry. Replace your-value with your own values.
Claude Desktop
{
"mcpServers": {
"google-surf-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"google-surf-mcp"
],
"env": {
"SEARCH_API": "your-value",
"GITHUB_TOKEN": "your-value"
}
}
}
}Settings > Developer > Edit Config. macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/, Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\. Restart Claude Desktop afterwards.
Claude Code
claude mcp add --env SEARCH_API=your-value --env GITHUB_TOKEN=your-value --transport stdio google-surf-mcp -- npx -y google-surf-mcpCursor
{
"mcpServers": {
"google-surf-mcp": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"google-surf-mcp"
],
"env": {
"SEARCH_API": "your-value",
"GITHUB_TOKEN": "your-value"
}
}
}
}Project file; use ~/.cursor/mcp.json to enable it in every project.
VS Code
{
"inputs": [
{
"type": "promptString",
"id": "search_api",
"description": "SEARCH_API",
"password": true
},
{
"type": "promptString",
"id": "github_token",
"description": "GITHUB_TOKEN",
"password": true
}
],
"servers": {
"google-surf-mcp": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"google-surf-mcp"
],
"env": {
"SEARCH_API": "${input:search_api}",
"GITHUB_TOKEN": "${input:github_token}"
}
}
}
}Config formats checked against the official docs on Oct 7, 2026: modelcontextprotocol.io (opens in a new tab), code.claude.com (opens in a new tab), cursor.com (opens in a new tab), code.visualstudio.com (opens in a new tab).
Environment variables
Variables the server reads at startup.
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
SEARCH_APIsecret | No | SearchApi API key. Required only for SearchApi primary or fallback modes. |
SURF_SEARCH_PROVIDER | No | Provider for search and search_parallel: browser, searchapi, or fallback. Defaults to browser. |
SURF_SCHOLAR_PROVIDER | No | Provider for scholar_search: browser, searchapi, or fallback. Defaults to browser. |
SURF_BROWSER_ENGINE | No | Browser engine: auto, native, or playwright. Auto uses one hidden native Chrome broker shared across local MCP sessions. |
CHROME_PATH | No | Absolute path to the Chrome binary. Auto-detected on Windows/macOS/Linux when omitted. |
SURF_PROFILE_ROOT | No | Directory for the warm Chrome profile. Defaults to ~/.google-surf-mcp. |
SURF_RESEARCH | No | Enable local project memory and hybrid retrieval. Defaults to true. |
SURF_RETRIEVAL_MODE | No | Shared route for search and search_parallel: live or hybrid. Defaults to hybrid. |
SURF_RESEARCH_ROOT | No | Embedded SurrealDB data directory. Defaults to /research. |
SURF_RESEARCH_VECTOR_MODEL | No | Local model for HNSW retrieval and shared reranking. Defaults to Xenova/multilingual-e5-small; use off to disable. |
SURF_RESEARCH_VECTOR_LOW_MEMORY | No | Disable ONNX CPU memory arena and memory pattern. Defaults to true. |
SURF_RESEARCH_VECTOR_THREADS | No | ONNX intra-op thread count from 1 to 16. Defaults to 4. |
SURF_RESEARCH_REPO_AUTO | No | Sparse-index at most one eligible small GitHub repository per search call. Defaults to true. |
SURF_RESEARCH_REPO_AUTO_MAX_MB | No | Maximum searchable repository source-text size in MB. Assets are excluded. Defaults to 20. |
SURF_RESEARCH_REPO_AUTO_MAX_FILES | No | Maximum repository source file count for automatic indexing. Defaults to 2000. |
SURF_RESEARCH_BROKER_IDLE_MS | No | Shared research broker idle lifetime in milliseconds. Defaults to 60000. |
SURF_RESEARCH_READ_CONCURRENCY | No | Maximum concurrent research broker reads. Defaults to 4. |
SURF_RESEARCH_QUERY_TIMEOUT_MS | No | Timeout per embedded SurrealDB query in milliseconds. Defaults to 120000; timed-out retrieval lanes are reported as partial. |
GITHUB_TOKENsecret | No | Optional token that raises GitHub API limits for repository inspection. |
SURF_LOCALE | No | Browser locale, e.g. en-US. |
About Google Surf MCP
Web searches, papers, and GitHub repositories are stored as PKM, ontology, and lineage. The view above is generated with projectmemory(action="export", exportformat="html", exportview="graph", allprojects=true).
- google-search
- mcp
- model-context-protocol
- playwright
- academic-research
- fetch
- pdf-processing
- self-healing
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What is Google Surf MCP?
Google Surf MCP is an MCP server that adds web browsing tools to AI assistants such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor. Web, academic and code search with graph RAG, data lineage, ontology and cross-project schema links. It has 291 GitHub stars, is released under the MIT license and runs locally with npx -y google-surf-mcp. The source code is at github.com/HarimxChoi/google-surf-mcp.
How do I install the Google Surf MCP MCP server?
Add the command npx -y google-surf-mcp to your MCP client: put it in claude_desktop_config.json for Claude Desktop, run claude mcp add for Claude Code, or add it to .cursor/mcp.json (Cursor) or .vscode/mcp.json (VS Code). The snippets on this page are ready to paste.
Is Google Surf MCP free?
The server is open source under the MIT license, so running it is free. It needs credentials (SEARCH_API and GITHUB_TOKEN) for the service it connects to, which may require a paid account.
Is Google Surf MCP actively maintained?
The most recent commit was on Sep 10, 2026. The latest release is v1.1.3, published Sep 10, 2026. appsgit only lists MCP servers with a commit in the last six months and re-checks every server daily.