Crawl4AI-RAG-MCP-Server
The Crawl4AI RAG MCP Server is designed to enhance the capabilities of AI agents and AI coding assistants by providing powerful web crawling and RAG functionalities. It allows users to scrape, store, and utilize web content efficiently through a Model Context Protocol implementation. Notable features include intelligent URL handling and parallel page processing.
Crawl4AI RAG MCP Server
Web Crawling and RAG Capabilities for AI Agents and AI Coding Assistants
A powerful implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrated with Crawl4AI and Supabase for providing AI agents and AI coding assistants with advanced web crawling and RAG capabilities.
With this MCP server, you can scrape anything and then use that knowledge anywhere for RAG.
Overview
This MCP server provides tools that enable AI agents to crawl websites, store content in a vector database (Supabase), and perform RAG over the crawled content.
Features
- Smart URL Detection: Automatically detects and handles different URL types (regular webpages, sitemaps, text files)
- Recursive Crawling: Follows internal links to discover content
- Parallel Processing: Efficiently crawls multiple pages simultaneously
- Content Chunking: Intelligently splits content by headers and size for better processing
- Vector Search: Performs RAG over crawled content, optionally filtering by data source for precision
- Source Retrieval: Retrieve sources available for filtering to guide the RAG process
Tools
The server provides four essential web crawling and search tools:
crawl_single_page
: Quickly crawl a single web page and store its content in the vector databasesmart_crawl_url
: Intelligently crawl a full website based on the type of URL provided (sitemap, llms-full.txt, or a regular webpage that needs to be crawled recursively)get_available_sources
: Get a list of all available sources (domains) in the databaseperform_rag_query
: Search for relevant content using semantic search with optional source filtering
Prerequisites
- Docker/Docker Desktop if running the MCP server as a container (recommended)
- Python 3.12+ if running the MCP server directly through uv
- Supabase (database for RAG)
- OpenAI API key (for generating embeddings)
Installation
Using Docker (Recommended)
-
Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/coleam00/mcp-crawl4ai-rag.git cd mcp-crawl4ai-rag
-
Build the Docker image:
docker build -t mcp/crawl4ai-rag --build-arg PORT=8051 .
-
Create a
.env
file based on the configuration section below
Using uv directly (no Docker)
-
Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/coleam00/mcp-crawl4ai-rag.git cd mcp-crawl4ai-rag
-
Install uv if you don't have it:
pip install uv
-
Create and activate a virtual environment:
uv venv .venv\Scripts\activate # on Mac/Linux: source .venv/bin/activate
-
Install dependencies:
uv pip install -e . crawl4ai-setup
-
Create a
.env
file based on the configuration section below
Database Setup
Before running the server, you need to set up the database with the pgvector extension:
-
Go to the SQL Editor in your Supabase dashboard (create a new project first if necessary)
-
Create a new query and paste the contents of
crawled_pages.sql
-
Run the query to create the necessary tables and functions
Configuration
Create a .env
file in the project root with the following variables:
# MCP Server Configuration
HOST=0.0.0.0
PORT=8051
TRANSPORT=sse
# OpenAI API Configuration
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key
# Supabase Configuration
SUPABASE_URL=your_supabase_project_url
SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY=your_supabase_service_key
Running the Server
Using Docker
docker run --env-file .env -p 8051:8051 mcp/crawl4ai-rag
Using Python
uv run src/crawl4ai_mcp.py
The server will start and listen on the configured host and port.
Integration with MCP Clients
SSE Configuration
Once you have the server running with SSE transport, you can connect to it using this configuration:
{
"mcpServers": {
"crawl4ai-rag": {
"transport": "sse",
"url": "http://localhost:8051/sse"
}
}
}
Note for Windsurf users: Use
serverUrl
instead ofurl
in your configuration:{ "mcpServers": { "crawl4ai-rag": { "transport": "sse", "serverUrl": "http://localhost:8051/sse" } } }
Note for Docker users: Use
host.docker.internal
instead oflocalhost
if your client is running in a different container. This will apply if you are using this MCP server within n8n!
Stdio Configuration
Add this server to your MCP configuration for Claude Desktop, Windsurf, or any other MCP client:
{
"mcpServers": {
"crawl4ai-rag": {
"command": "python",
"args": ["path/to/crawl4ai-mcp/src/crawl4ai_mcp.py"],
"env": {
"TRANSPORT": "stdio",
"OPENAI_API_KEY": "your_openai_api_key",
"SUPABASE_URL": "your_supabase_url",
"SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY": "your_supabase_service_key"
}
}
}
}
Docker with Stdio Configuration
{
"mcpServers": {
"crawl4ai-rag": {
"command": "docker",
"args": ["run", "--rm", "-i",
"-e", "TRANSPORT",
"-e", "OPENAI_API_KEY",
"-e", "SUPABASE_URL",
"-e", "SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY",
"mcp/crawl4ai"],
"env": {
"TRANSPORT": "stdio",
"OPENAI_API_KEY": "your_openai_api_key",
"SUPABASE_URL": "your_supabase_url",
"SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY": "your_supabase_service_key"
}
}
}
}
Building Your Own Server
This implementation provides a foundation for building more complex MCP servers with web crawling capabilities. To build your own:
- Add your own tools by creating methods with the
@mcp.tool()
decorator - Create your own lifespan function to add your own dependencies
- Modify the
utils.py
file for any helper functions you need - Extend the crawling capabilities by adding more specialized crawlers