intercept-mcp

Give your AI the ability to read the web. One command, no API keys required.

Without it, your AI hits a URL and gets a 403, a wall, or a wall of raw HTML. With intercept, it almost always gets the content — clean markdown, ready to use.

Handles tweets, YouTube videos (with transcripts when available), arXiv papers, PDFs, Wikipedia articles, and GitHub repos. If the first strategy fails, it tries up to 13 more before giving up.

Works with any MCP client: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, and more.

Install

Claude Code

claude mcp add intercept -s user -- npx -y intercept-mcp

Codex

codex mcp add intercept -- npx -y intercept-mcp

Cursor

Settings → MCP → Add Server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "intercept": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "intercept-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Windsurf

Settings → MCP → Add Server → same JSON config as above.

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "intercept": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "intercept-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Other MCP clients

Any client that supports stdio MCP servers can run npx -y intercept-mcp.

No API keys needed for the fetch tool.

How it works

URLs are processed in three stages:

1. Site-specific handlers

Known URL patterns are routed to dedicated handlers before the fallback pipeline:

Pattern	Handler	What you get
twitter.com/*/status/*, x.com/*/status/*	Twitter/X	Tweet text, author, media, engagement stats (via third-party APIs)
youtube.com/watch?v=*, youtu.be/*	YouTube	Title, channel, duration, views, description, transcript (when captions available)
arxiv.org/abs/*, arxiv.org/pdf/*	arXiv	Paper metadata, authors, abstract, categories
*.pdf	PDF	Extracted text (text-layer PDFs only)
*.wikipedia.org/wiki/*	Wikipedia	Clean article content via Wikimedia REST API
github.com/{owner}/{repo}	GitHub	Raw README.md content

2. Fallback pipeline

If no handler matches (or the handler returns nothing), the URL enters the multi-tier pipeline:

Tier	Fetcher	Strategy
1	Cloudflare Browser Run	JS rendering + markdown extraction (optional, needs API token)
1	Jina Reader	Clean markdown extraction service
2	Wayback Machine	Archived version from archive.org
2	archive.ph	Archived snapshots via timemap API + stealth TLS fetch
2	Google Cache	Google's cached page version
2	Arquivo.pt	Portuguese web archive (broad international coverage)
2	Codetabs	CORS proxy
3	Raw fetch	Direct GET with browser headers + Turndown markdown conversion
3	Stealth fetch	Browser TLS fingerprint impersonation via got-scraping (opt-in, see below)
4	RSS, CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, HN, Reddit	Metadata / discussion fallbacks
5	OG Meta	Open Graph tags (guaranteed fallback)

Tier 2 fetchers run in parallel. When multiple succeed, the highest quality result wins. All other tiers run sequentially.

All fetchers return proper Markdown (headings, links, bold, tables, code blocks) via Turndown — not plain text.

3. Caching

Results are cached in-memory with TTL (30 min for successes, 5 min for failures). Max 100 entries with LRU eviction. Failed URLs are cached to prevent re-attempting known-dead URLs.

Tools

fetch

Fetch a URL and return its content as clean markdown.

• url (string, required) — URL to fetch
• maxTier (number, optional, 1-5) — Stop at this tier for speed-sensitive cases

search

Search the web and return results.

• query (string, required) — Search query
• count (number, optional, 1-20, default 5) — Number of results

Uses Brave Search API if BRAVE_API_KEY is set, then SearXNG if SEARXNG_URL is set, then DuckDuckGo as an unreliable last resort.

Prompts

research-topic

Search for a topic and fetch the top results for a multi-source summary.

• topic (string) — The topic to research
• depth (string, default "3") — Number of top results to fetch

extract-article

Fetch a URL and extract the key points from the content.

• url (string) — The URL to fetch and summarize

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
BRAVE_API_KEY	No	Brave Search API key for search
SEARXNG_URL	No	Self-hosted SearXNG instance URL (recommended)
CF_API_TOKEN	No	Cloudflare API token with "Browser Rendering - Edit" permission
CF_ACCOUNT_ID	No	Cloudflare account ID (required if CF_API_TOKEN is set)
USE_STEALTH_FETCH	No	Set to true to enable stealth fetcher (see warning below)

Search: Has a DuckDuckGo fallback but it's rate-limited and unreliable. For production use, self-host SearXNG and set SEARXNG_URL (see below), or get a Brave Search API key.

Fetch: Works without any keys. Set CF_API_TOKEN + CF_ACCOUNT_ID to enable Cloudflare Browser Run (formerly Browser Rendering) for JavaScript-heavy pages (SPAs, React sites).

Stealth fetch (USE_STEALTH_FETCH)

Use at your own risk. When enabled, this adds a fetcher that impersonates real browser TLS fingerprints (Chrome/Firefox cipher suites, HTTP/2 settings, header ordering) using got-scraping. This can bypass bot detection and CAPTCHA triggers on sites that would otherwise block automated requests.

This fetcher runs at tier 3 after the regular raw fetch. If the raw fetch gets blocked (CAPTCHA, Cloudflare challenge, 403), the stealth fetcher retries with browser impersonation.

This may violate the terms of service of some websites. The authors of intercept-mcp take no responsibility for how this feature is used. It is disabled by default and must be explicitly opted into.

Self-hosting SearXNG

For reliable search, self-host SearXNG with Docker. A config is included in the repo:

git clone https://github.com/bighippoman/intercept-mcp.git
cd intercept-mcp/searxng && docker compose up -d

Then set SEARXNG_URL=http://localhost:8888. No rate limits, no CAPTCHAs, aggregates Google + Bing + DuckDuckGo + Wikipedia + Brave.

Or use any existing SearXNG instance — just set SEARXNG_URL to its URL.

URL normalization

Incoming URLs are automatically cleaned:

• Strips 60+ tracking params (UTM, click IDs, analytics, A/B testing, etc.)
• Removes hash fragments
• Upgrades to HTTPS
• Cleans AMP artifacts
• Preserves functional params (ref, format, page, offset, limit)

Content quality detection

Each fetcher result is scored for quality. Automatic fail on:

• CAPTCHA / Cloudflare challenges
• Login walls
• HTTP error pages in body
• Content under 200 characters

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18
• No API keys required for basic use