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web-shooter

Official registry Search and web

Fast, low-token web reader and focused crawler. Returns ranked passages, not whole pages.

Source code Documentation

Install

Add this to your client's MCP configuration (Claude Desktop: claude_desktop_config.json; Cursor: .cursor/mcp.json; VS Code and others use the same "mcpServers" shape).

CARGO package web-shooter

Documentation

From the project's README on GitHub, refreshed weekly. Links open on GitHub.

Contents
  1. web-shooter
  2. Why it's better
  3. Tools
  4. Setup
  5. More
  6. License

web-shooter

A fast web reader for AI assistants, served over MCP. It reads web pages and PDFs and returns only the passages that answer the question, not whole pages. It runs locally and keeps nothing.

Why it's better

Live benchmark on 32 questions (web pages, JSON APIs, PDFs), 2026-10-31:

ToolMedian latencyAvg tokens returnedAnswer present
web-shooter793 ms1,08129/32
Firecrawl, cache allowed1,207 ms25,40928/32
Firecrawl, fresh1,548 ms25,02528/32
Jina Reader2,046 ms25,34524/32

Faster, and about 23× fewer tokens, with the same accuracy. Caveats and the held-out check are in docs/guide.md.

Tools

ToolUse it whenReturns
fetch(urls, query?, keywords?, max_tokens?)You have URLs (or local PDF paths)The best passages, grouped by page; whole pages without a query. Pages built by JavaScript are loaded in headless Chrome automatically
links(url, query?, keywords?, max_links?)You want to choose which page to read nextThe page's links, ranked by the query
crawl(url, query, keywords?, max_pages?, max_depth?, other_sites?, max_results?)You have a start page and a goal, not the URLsThe most relevant pages, as URLs with one-line snippets

Setup

1. Install (macOS on Apple Silicon, Linux, Windows):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/heyyviv/web-shooter/releases/latest/download/web-shooter-installer.sh | sh
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/heyyviv/web-shooter/releases/latest/download/web-shooter-installer.ps1 | iex"

Or from source (Rust 1.88+, and the only route on Intel Macs):

cargo install --git https://github.com/heyyviv/web-shooter

2. Register it. In Claude Code:

claude mcp add --scope user web-shooter -- web-shooter

Then run /mcp or start a new session. For Claude Desktop, Cursor and other clients, add a stdio server with the absolute path to the binary:

{ "mcpServers": { "web-shooter": { "command": "/absolute/path/to/web-shooter" } } }

The first query downloads a 30 MB embedding model. Pages built by JavaScript need Chrome installed.

More

docs/guide.md covers usage, configuration, updating, limits and development. docs/how-it-works.md explains the internals.

  • MCP Registry name: mcp-name: io.github.heyyviv/web-shooter

License

Licensed under either of Apache License 2.0 or MIT license, at your option.

Frequently asked questions

What is web-shooter?

Fast, low-token web reader and focused crawler. Returns ranked passages, not whole pages.

How do I install web-shooter?

Follow the installation steps in its documentation, shown on this page and in its repository.

Does web-shooter need an API key?

Its registry entry lists no required key or secret. Some features may still need an account with the service it connects to.

Is web-shooter open source?

Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license.

Who maintains web-shooter?

It is published by heyyviv. AI.tn lists it but does not maintain or endorse it.

From the official MCP Registry. Listing is not an endorsement: review a server's code and permissions before giving it access to your data.