@iflow-ai/search-mcp

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for iFlow Search — exposes web search, image search, and web fetch to any MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and other compatible hosts).

Built on @iflow-ai/search-core. Same three tools as @iflow-ai/search-langchain, same names, same shapes — so prompts that drive an iFlow-search-tool agent under LangChain keep working verbatim under MCP.

Status — MVP stable (0.1.0)

@iflow-ai/[email protected] is live on dist-tag latest. Bare npm install @iflow-ai/search-mcp resolves the stable release. @next remains the prerelease channel and currently points at 0.1.0-pre.2; use it only when you need to track an upcoming pre-cut. Run npm view @iflow-ai/search-mcp dist-tags --json to read live state.

The Official MCP Registry entry io.github.zhengyanglsun/iflow-search publishes 0.1.0 as the current isLatest version (0.1.0-pre.2 remains visible only as a historical entry — see Official MCP Registry below). The registry is metadata-only; the package itself installs from npm.

• Transport: stdio only. No SSE, no streamable HTTP, no WebSocket in this release.
• Tools: iflow_web_search, iflow_image_search, iflow_web_fetch.
• Configuration: environment variables only, supplied via the MCP client's env block (never via CLI flags, dotfiles, keychain, or file discovery).

Install

pnpm add @iflow-ai/search-mcp
# or
npm install @iflow-ai/search-mcp

Node ≥ 18.

Official MCP Registry

This server is listed in the Official MCP Registry:

• Registry name: io.github.zhengyanglsun/iflow-search
• npm package: @iflow-ai/search-mcp on dist-tag latest (0.1.0)
• Registry-tracked version: 0.1.0 (isLatest: true, status: active). 0.1.0-pre.2 remains as a historical entry only.
• Transport: stdio

The registry stores metadata only — the package itself still installs from npm. MCP clients launch the server with npx -y @iflow-ai/search-mcp, which resolves the current stable release (0.1.0), or pin a concrete version (e.g. @iflow-ai/[email protected]) for reproducibility. @next is still available for pre-cut testing.

Use it from an MCP client

Claude Code / Claude Desktop / generic mcpServers JSON

Add an entry to your client's mcpServers configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "iflow-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@iflow-ai/search-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "IFLOW_API_KEY": "YOUR_IFLOW_API_KEY",
        "IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT": "claude-code"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Claude Desktop, the wiring is identical but set IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT to claude-desktop so backend analytics can tell the two apart:

"env": {
  "IFLOW_API_KEY": "YOUR_IFLOW_API_KEY",
  "IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT": "claude-desktop"
}

IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT is optional — see the Configuration table for the allowed value set. If absent, no IFlow-MCP-Client header is sent (the request is still attributed to IFlow-Source: mcp).

Do not commit a real key. Put YOUR_IFLOW_API_KEY in version control and inject the real value at runtime (your client's secret store, a local override file ignored by git, a direnv block, etc.). @iflow-ai/search-mcp never reads from disk and will not pick up a .env automatically.

Verified host. Claude Code is a verified MCP host for this package — end-to-end stdio smoke green on @iflow-ai/[email protected] with Claude Code CLI 2.1.148-20260509.2, all three tools exercised against the real iFlow Search API. For one-off smoke / evaluation runs that must not touch your persistent Claude Code config, use a session-scoped config file with claude -p --strict-mcp-config --mcp-config <file> --no-session-persistence … and let IFLOW_API_KEY reach the MCP child via Claude Code's parent-env spread (do NOT write the key into the temp mcp.json). The reproduction sketch is in docs/platform-smokes-mcp.md.

Hermes Agent

Add the server to ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

# ~/.hermes/config.yaml
mcp_servers:
  iflow-search:
    command: npx
    args:
      - -y
      - "@iflow-ai/search-mcp@next"
    env:
      IFLOW_API_KEY: YOUR_IFLOW_API_KEY
      IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT: hermes

Verify Hermes can spawn the server and list its three tools:

hermes mcp test iflow-search

Notes:

• IFLOW_API_KEY must be set inside the server's env: block. Hermes only forwards a small allowlist of parent-shell variables to MCP subprocesses (PATH, HOME, USER, …); anything else, including your iFlow key, has to be declared here. Keep YOUR_IFLOW_API_KEY as a placeholder in anything you share — never commit the real key.
• IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT: hermes tags every outbound request with the IFlow-MCP-Client: hermes header so backend analytics can distinguish Hermes traffic from Claude Code / Claude Desktop. The field is optional but recommended.
• Stable 0.1.0 is on dist-tag latest; the bare @iflow-ai/search-mcp shown above resolves it. Pin to the concrete version your registry index advertises (e.g. @iflow-ai/[email protected]) when you want deterministic upgrades — run npm view @iflow-ai/search-mcp dist-tags --json to read the current state. @next (0.1.0-pre.2 at time of writing) is still published for pre-cut testing.
• stdio only: Hermes runs the binary as a child process and speaks JSON-RPC over stdin/stdout. No url / headers fields are needed.

OpenCode

OpenCode is a terminal coding agent with first-class stdio MCP support. Configuration goes in opencode.json (project-scoped) or ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json (user-scoped).

Two things make OpenCode's wiring different from the Claude / Hermes blocks above:

1. The top-level block is mcp, not mcpServers, and the per-server env block is environment, not env. command and args are folded into a single command: [...] array.
2. Do NOT put IFLOW_API_KEY in the environment block. OpenCode inherits the parent process's full env into every stdio MCP child (see packages/opencode/src/mcp/index.ts in anomalyco/opencode: env: { ...process.env, ...mcp.environment }). Exporting IFLOW_API_KEY in the shell that launches OpenCode is sufficient — the key never appears in any committed file. The environment map does not expand ${VAR} shell syntax (Effect schema Record<string, string>, taken verbatim), so writing "${IFLOW_API_KEY}" as a value would send the literal string to the MCP child and break iFlow auth.

Export the key once in your shell:

export IFLOW_API_KEY="YOUR_IFLOW_API_KEY"

Then put only non-secret values in opencode.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "iflow-search": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": ["npx", "-y", "@iflow-ai/search-mcp@next"],
      "environment": {
        "IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT": "opencode"
      },
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}

IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT: opencode is accepted by the existing [a-z0-9._-]{1,64} validation in packages/search-mcp/src/config.ts — no code change is needed to add OpenCode as a host slug.

Verify the wiring without launching the TUI:

opencode mcp list

A successful run prints ✓ iflow-search connected. Add --print-logs --log-level INFO to confirm tool discovery — OpenCode logs service=mcp key=iflow-search toolCount=3 create() successfully created client once the child returns tools/list.

OpenCode prefixes MCP tools with the server name in its tool registry. Your LLM will see iflow-search_iflow_web_search, iflow-search_iflow_image_search, iflow-search_iflow_web_fetch. The raw MCP names returned by tools/list remain iflow_web_search / iflow_image_search / iflow_web_fetch; the iflow-search_ prefix is OpenCode's namespace, not part of this package.

stdio is the supported transport here. OpenCode also supports remote MCP (type: "remote" with url), but this package only ships a stdio binary — no SSE / streamable-HTTP recommendation applies.

CrewAI

CrewAI is a Python multi-agent framework. It consumes MCP servers through the MCPServerAdapter class shipped in crewai-tools[mcp], which spawns the stdio child and exposes each MCP tool as a CrewAIMCPTool your Agents can call.

This path uses the existing published @iflow-ai/search-mcp stdio MCP server:

• No new npm package is required.
• No CrewAI-native Python package is required — crewai-tools[mcp] already bridges any MCP stdio server, including this one.
• Keep IFLOW_API_KEY in the parent shell env, not hard-coded in Python source. StdioServerParameters.env accepts a dict that is passed to the MCP child as its process.env; spreading os.environ into it is sufficient to forward the key without ever writing it to a tracked file.

Install (crewai-tools requires Python 3.10–3.13):

pip install "crewai-tools[mcp]"

Minimal usage:

import os
from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter
from mcp import StdioServerParameters

server_params = StdioServerParameters(
    command="npx",
    args=["-y", "@iflow-ai/search-mcp@next"],
    env={**os.environ, "IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT": "crewai"},
)

with MCPServerAdapter(server_params) as tools:
    print([tool.name for tool in tools])
    # → ['iflow_web_search', 'iflow_image_search', 'iflow_web_fetch']
    # tools can be passed to CrewAI Agents (agent=Agent(tools=tools, ...))
    # or invoked directly in smoke tests via tool.run(**kwargs)

CrewAI does not prefix MCP tool names with the server slug — the three names listed by MCPServerAdapter are the raw MCP names emitted by this package: iflow_web_search, iflow_image_search, iflow_web_fetch. A model-driven Crew sees them under those same names.

IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT="crewai" is accepted by the existing [a-z0-9._-]{1,64} validation in packages/search-mcp/src/config.ts — no code change is required to add CrewAI as a host slug.

Tested scope. The recorded CrewAI smoke verified MCPServerAdapter tool discovery (tools/list returned all three expected tools) and direct CrewAIMCPTool.run(**kwargs) calls against the real iFlow API. The full CrewAI Agent / Task / Crew LLM-driven tool-selection loop was not exercised — it requires an authenticated LLM provider, which is outside this package's wire path. See docs/platform-smokes-mcp.md for the smoke detail.

Cline (VS Code extension)

Cline is a VS Code coding agent with built-in stdio MCP support. It reads MCP server definitions from ~/.cline/mcp.json (macOS/Linux; equivalent per-user path on Windows).

Add an iflow-search entry pointing at the stable package — npx -y resolves the current latest release without a global install:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "iflow-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@iflow-ai/search-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "IFLOW_API_KEY": "YOUR_IFLOW_API_KEY",
        "IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT": "cline"
      },
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

After Cline reloads its MCP config, the three tools — iflow_web_search, iflow_image_search, iflow_web_fetch — show up in the agent's tool list. The same server is discoverable in the Official MCP Registry as io.github.zhengyanglsun/iflow-search; Cline still installs the package directly from npm.

IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT: cline is accepted by the existing [a-z0-9._-]{1,64} validation in packages/search-mcp/src/config.ts — no code change is required to add Cline as a host slug.

Do not commit or share ~/.cline/mcp.json. If Cline can inject IFLOW_API_KEY from your parent shell or a local secret manager, prefer that over hard-coding the literal value into the config file. Treat any shared copy of mcp.json as if the key inside it were already leaked. @iflow-ai/search-mcp never reads from disk and will not pick up a stray .env, so the only place the key needs to live is the env block Cline forwards to the child process.

autoApprove: [] (the default shown above) keeps every tool call gated behind Cline's approval UI — leave it that way until you have verified the wiring end-to-end with a known-safe query.

After your client restarts, the three tools appear automatically:

Tool	What it does
iflow_web_search	Search the web with iFlow. Returns titles, URLs, snippets.
iflow_image_search	Search images. Returns image URLs, titles, source pages.
iflow_web_fetch	Fetch the readable contents of a single URL.

Configuration

All configuration is read from process.env. Set these inside the env block of the MCP client config above.

Variable	Required	Default	Purpose
IFLOW_API_KEY	yes	—	Bearer token sent to iFlow as Authorization: Bearer ....
IFLOW_BASE_URL	no	https://platform.iflow.cn	Override for testing / private deployments.
IFLOW_TIMEOUT_MS	no	30000	Per-request timeout. Must be a positive integer if set.
IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT	no	—	Declared MCP host name (e.g. hermes, claude-code, claude-desktop, opencode, crewai). When set, emitted as the IFlow-MCP-Client header so backend analytics can distinguish hosts. Allowed: [a-z0-9._-]{1,64}. Absent = no header sent (we never send a placeholder like unknown).
IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT_VERSION	no	—	Optional version for the above host. When both are set, emitted as IFlow-MCP-Client-Version. Allowed: [A-Za-z0-9._+-]{1,64}. Ignored unless IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT is set.

A missing or invalid configuration is a fatal init error: the process writes a one-line diagnostic to stderr (never stdout, so the JSON-RPC stream is not corrupted) and exits with code 1.

Programmatic API

If you want to embed the server in your own host (custom transport, tests, …), the package also exports the building blocks:

import { createIFlowSearchClient } from "@iflow-ai/search-core";
import { buildServer } from "@iflow-ai/search-mcp";

const client = createIFlowSearchClient({
  apiKey: process.env.IFLOW_API_KEY!,
  source: "mcp",
  integrationName: "@iflow-ai/search-mcp",
  integrationVersion: "0.1.0",
});

const server = buildServer({ client, integrationVersion: "0.1.0" });
// connect `server` to any Transport from @modelcontextprotocol/sdk

What this package does NOT do

The MVP is deliberately small. The following are explicit non-goals for this release:

• No HTTP / SSE / WebSocket transport — stdio only.
• No file-based config, no .env auto-discovery, no keychain integration.
• No multi-tenant hosting, no API-key proxying, no per-call key override.
• No bundled prompts or resources — only the three search tools.

Attribution

Every outbound request to iFlow carries:

IFlow-Source: mcp
IFlow-Integration: @iflow-ai/search-mcp
IFlow-Integration-Version: <pkg version>
User-Agent: @iflow-ai/search-mcp/<pkg version>

When the MCP client config sets IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT (and optionally IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT_VERSION), the following are additionally sent:

IFlow-MCP-Client: hermes | claude-code | claude-desktop | ...
IFlow-MCP-Client-Version: <only if IFLOW_MCP_CLIENT_VERSION is set>

This lets iFlow account for traffic generated through the MCP server separately from direct, LangChain, or other adapters, AND distinguish which MCP host (Hermes / Claude Code / Claude Desktop / custom) generated each request. The IFlow-MCP-Client value is operator-declared — it is not auto-detected from the MCP clientInfo handshake, so backend dashboards see a stable, allowlist-style set of host slugs rather than free-form, self-reported strings.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.