walksoda/crawl-mcp

Crawl-MCP: Unofficial MCP Server for crawl4ai

⚠️ Important: This is an unofficial MCP server implementation for the excellent crawl4ai library.
Not affiliated with the original crawl4ai project.

A comprehensive Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that wraps the powerful crawl4ai library with advanced AI capabilities. Extract and analyze content from any source: web pages, PDFs, Office documents, YouTube videos, and more. Features intelligent summarization to dramatically reduce token usage while preserving key information.

🌟 Key Features

• 🔍 Google Search Integration - 7 optimized search genres with Google official operators
• 🔍 Advanced Web Crawling: JavaScript support, deep site mapping, entity extraction
• 🌐 Universal Content Extraction: Web pages, PDFs, Word docs, Excel, PowerPoint, ZIP archives
• 🤖 AI-Powered Summarization: Smart token reduction (up to 88.5%) while preserving essential information
• 🎬 YouTube Integration: Extract video transcripts and summaries without API keys
• ⚡ Production Ready: 21 specialized tools with comprehensive error handling

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites (Required First)

Install system dependencies for Playwright:

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Manual Required):

# Manual setup required due to t64 library transition
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y \
  libnss3 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libxss1 libasound2t64 \
  libgbm1 libgtk-3-0t64 libxshmfence-dev libxrandr2 \
  libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxi6 \
  fonts-noto-color-emoji fonts-unifont python3-venv python3-pip

python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install playwright==1.54.0 && playwright install chromium
sudo playwright install-deps

Other Linux/macOS:

sudo bash scripts/prepare_for_uvx_playwright.sh

Windows (as Administrator):

scripts/prepare_for_uvx_playwright.ps1

Installation

UVX (Recommended - Easiest):

# After system preparation above - that's it!
uvx --from git+https://github.com/walksoda/crawl-mcp crawl-mcp

Docker (Production-Ready):

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/walksoda/crawl-mcp
cd crawl-mcp

# Build and run with Docker Compose (STDIO mode)
docker-compose up --build

# Or build and run HTTP mode on port 8000
docker-compose --profile http up --build crawl4ai-mcp-http

# Or build manually
docker build -t crawl4ai-mcp .
docker run -it crawl4ai-mcp

Docker Features:

• 🔧 Multi-Browser Support: Chromium, Firefox, Webkit headless browsers
• 🐧 Google Chrome: Additional Chrome Stable for compatibility
• ⚡ Optimized Performance: Pre-configured browser flags for Docker
• 🔒 Security: Non-root user execution
• 📦 Complete Dependencies: All required libraries included

Claude Desktop Setup

UVX Installation: Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crawl-mcp": {
      "transport": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/walksoda/crawl-mcp",
        "crawl-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "CRAWL4AI_LANG": "en"
      }
    }
  }
}

Docker HTTP Mode:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "crawl-mcp": {
      "transport": "http",
      "baseUrl": "http://localhost:8000"
    }
  }
}

For Japanese interface:

"env": {
  "CRAWL4AI_LANG": "ja"
}

📖 Documentation

Language-Specific Documentation

• English: directory
• 日本語: directory

🛠️ Tool Overview

Web Crawling

• crawl_url - Single page crawling with JavaScript support
• deep_crawl_site - Multi-page site mapping and exploration
• crawl_url_with_fallback - Robust crawling with retry strategies
• batch_crawl - Process multiple URLs simultaneously

AI-Powered Analysis

• intelligent_extract - Semantic content extraction with custom instructions
• auto_summarize - LLM-based summarization for large content
• extract_entities - Pattern-based entity extraction (emails, phones, URLs, etc.)

Media Processing

• process_file - Convert PDFs, Office docs, ZIP archives to markdown
• extract_youtube_transcript - Multi-language transcript extraction
• batch_extract_youtube_transcripts - Process multiple videos

Search Integration

• search_google - Genre-filtered Google search with metadata
• search_and_crawl - Combined search and content extraction
• batch_search_google - Multiple search queries with analysis

🎯 Common Use Cases

Content Research:

search_and_crawl → intelligent_extract → structured analysis

Documentation Mining:

deep_crawl_site → batch processing → comprehensive extraction

Media Analysis:

extract_youtube_transcript → auto_summarize → insight generation

Competitive Intelligence:

batch_crawl → extract_entities → comparative analysis

🚨 Quick Troubleshooting

Installation Issues:

1. Run system diagnostics: Use get_system_diagnostics tool
2. Re-run setup scripts with proper privileges
3. Try development installation method

Performance Issues:

• Use wait_for_js: true for JavaScript-heavy sites
• Increase timeout for slow-loading pages
• Enable auto_summarize for large content

Configuration Issues:

• Check JSON syntax in claude_desktop_config.json
• Verify file paths are absolute
• Restart Claude Desktop after configuration changes

🏗️ Project Structure

• Original Library: crawl4ai by unclecode
• MCP Wrapper: This repository (walksoda)
• Implementation: Unofficial third-party integration

📄 License

This project is an unofficial wrapper around the crawl4ai library. Please refer to the original crawl4ai license for the underlying functionality.

🤝 Contributing

See our for contribution guidelines and development setup instructions.

🔗 Related Projects

• crawl4ai - The underlying web crawling library
• Model Context Protocol - The standard this server implements
• Claude Desktop - Primary client for MCP servers