Google Surf MCP: Free Google Search MCP with PDF Handling and Tiered Extraction
Google Surf MCP is a free MCP server for Google search and URL extraction that actually works — the author reports testing 6 free MCPs, all of which failed. It replaces the usual search MCP + fetch MCP combo with a single tool set that also auto-handles academic PDFs (arXiv, bioRxiv, Nature, OpenReview, NeurIPS, JMLR, PMLR, Springer, PubMed→PMC).
Key Features
- 4 tools:
search(SERP only),search_parallel(N concurrent queries),extract(url, mode?)(full/abstract/metadata),search_extract(query, mode?)(defaults to abstract) - Tiered extraction:
mode: "abstract"returns ~1500 chars per result for cheap relevance triage before paying for full bodies. A 5-result survey costs ~7.5k chars instead of 40k. - PDF detection: via Content-Type, %PDF magic, citation_pdf_url meta, and per-domain rules.
- Reliability: multi-strategy SERP parser with geometric verification (drops sponsored/knowledge panel/sidebar), SSRF guard (env-locked private/loopback block, DNS rebinding defense, per-hop redirect validation), 25MB fetch ceiling, malformed PDFs contained as error.
- Auto CAPTCHA recovery: when CAPTCHA fires, a visible Chrome window opens for human solving, then retries. The profile's reputation with Google is preserved.
- No API key, no proxies, no solver.
Stack and Speed
- Stack: TypeScript, Playwright + stealth, Readability, Turndown, unpdf. ~900 LOC.
- Speed (1Gbps): sequential ~1.5s/q (warm), 4 parallel ~2s wall, 10 parallel ~5s wall.
Example Usage
search_extract("latest AI research papers", mode: "abstract")
Returns abstracts of top results, letting an agent triage relevance before calling extract(url, mode: "full") on the winner.
Who it's for: Developers building AI agents that need reliable, free web search and extraction without external API keys or paid services.
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
👀 See Also
Open-Source Claude IDE Bridge Connects Dispatch, Desktop App, and Claude Code
The claude-ide-bridge is an MIT-licensed open-source tool that connects Claude Code to your IDE, providing access to LSP, debugger, terminals, git, and GitHub through 124 tools. It enables a workflow where tasks sent via Dispatch from a phone are handled by the Claude desktop app, which uses Claude Code to write code and run tests while interacting with the IDE.
Claude wrote 3,000 lines of code instead of importing pywikibot — a case study in AI agents ignoring existing libraries
A developer tasked Claude Code (Opus 4.7) with fixing typos on Fandom wikis. The model wrote ~3,000 lines of Python reimplementing pywikibot, mwparserfromhell, and RETF rules rather than importing them. The post explores why this happens and how a two-minute search reduced the codebase to 1,259 lines.
OpenClaw memory fix tool addresses performance degradation
A new slash command called /claw_memory_fix helps clean up OpenClaw memory files when the agent forgets credentials or permissions. The tool implements techniques from Alibaba, GitHub engineering, MemGPT, and January 2026 research on memory management.
companion-capture: Tool saves Claude Code's ephemeral speech bubbles
companion-capture is an open-source tool that captures Claude Code's companion character speech bubbles before they vanish from the terminal. It saves messages to markdown files and SQLite for search, using VT100 screen buffer parsing to track cursor positions.