You.com

You and your AI assistants gain fast, citation-backed web search, news, and research capabilities through a dedicated MCP server. This server connects your conversations to You.com APIs, enabling powerful search and research workflows with built-in citation support.

How to use

You interact with the server through MCP tools in your chat client. The available tools provide web search, smart search with citations, full research with focused guidance, and news search. Use them to fetch information, get concise explanations with sources, and retrieve up-to-date articles. Each tool is designed to give you actionable results you can cite in your work.

How to install

Prerequisites: Node.js version 16 or higher, npm or yarn, and a You.com API key.

Step 1: Clone the project and enter the directory.

git clone https://github.com/jimbul/youcom-mcp.git
cd youcom-mcp

Step 2: Install dependencies.

npm install

Step 3: Create the environment file based on the example and add your API key.

cp .env.example .env

Step 4: Add your You.com API key to the environment file.

YOU_API_KEY=your_actual_api_key_here

Step 5: Build the project.

npm run build

Step 6 (optional): Run locally for testing.

npm start

Configuration and integration with Claude

To use this MCP server with Claude (Anthropic Assistant), configure Claude to load the MCP server as a stdio-based process using the following settings.

"youcom-mcp": {
  "autoApprove": [],
  "disabled": false,
  "command": "node",
  "args": [
    "/absolute/path/to/your/youcom-mcp/dist/index.js"
  ],
  "env": {
    "YOU_API_KEY": "your_actual_api_key_here"
  },
  "transportType": "stdio"
}

Usage examples with MCP tools

Once configured, you can invoke the MCP tools to perform searches and retrieve results within your conversations. The following examples illustrate how you would request information from the server using tool names and queries.

<use_mcp_tool>
<server_name>youcom-mcp</server_name>
<tool_name>web_search</tool_name>
<arguments>
{
  "query": "latest research on renewable energy"
}
</arguments>
</use_mcp_tool>

<use_mcp_tool>
<server_name>youcom-mcp</server_name>
<tool_name>smart_search</tool_name>
<arguments>
{
  "query": "how do quantum computers work",
  "instructions": "explain in simple terms"
}
</arguments>
</use_mcp_tool>

<use_mcp_tool>
<server_name>youcom-mcp</server_name>
<tool_name>research</tool_name>
<arguments>
{
  "query": "effects of climate change on ocean ecosystems",
  "instructions": "focus on coral reefs"
}
</arguments>
</use_mcp_tool>

<use_mcp_tool>
<server_name>youcom-mcp</server_name>
<tool_name>news_search</tool_name>
<arguments>
{
  "query": "latest developments in AI"
}
</arguments>
</use_mcp_tool>

Notes on running evals and tests

If you need to run evaluations, you can execute the evaluation flow using an environment variable and the MCP evaluation command without rebuilding between tests.

OPENAI_API_KEY=your-key  npx mcp-eval src/evals/evals.ts src/index.ts

Available tools

web_search

Fetches web search results from You.com with citations to support claims and enable traceability.

smart_search

Provides AI-powered answers with citation support, offering concise responses with sources.

research

Performs in-depth research with focus areas and citations to back findings.

news_search

Retrieves latest news articles on a given topic from You.com News.