xAI Search MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that provides real-time web search and X (Twitter) search capabilities via the xAI API.

Quick Start

The easiest way to use this server is via npx — no clone or build required:

XAI_API_KEY=your_key npx @kicito/xai-search-mcp

Just set your XAI_API_KEY environment variable and configure your MCP client (see Configuration below).

Tools

web_search

Search the web in real-time. Returns results with source citations.

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | |---|---|---|---| | query | string | ✅ | The search query | | allowed_domains | string[] | ❌ | Only search within these domains (max 5) | | excluded_domains | string[] | ❌ | Exclude these domains from search (max 5) |

x_search

Search X (Twitter) posts, users, and threads. Returns results with source citations.

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | |---|---|---|---| | query | string | ✅ | The search query for X posts | | allowed_x_handles | string[] | ❌ | Only consider posts from these handles (max 10) | | excluded_x_handles | string[] | ❌ | Exclude posts from these handles (max 10) | | from_date | string | ❌ | Start date (ISO8601, e.g. 2025-01-01) | | to_date | string | ❌ | End date (ISO8601, e.g. 2025-06-01) |

Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ (for native fetch support)
• An xAI API key

Install & Build

npm install
npm run build

Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xai-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@kicito/xai-search-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "XAI_API_KEY": "your-xai-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to your Cursor MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xai-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@kicito/xai-search-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "XAI_API_KEY": "your-xai-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

If you prefer to clone and build manually:

git clone https://github.com/kicito/x_search_mcp.git
cd x_search_mcp
npm install
npm run build

Then use the full path in your config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xai-search": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/x_search_mcp/build/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "XAI_API_KEY": "your-xai-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Environment Variables

| Variable | Required | Default | Description | |---|---|---|---| | XAI_API_KEY | ✅ | — | Your xAI API key | | XAI_MODEL | ❌ | grok-4-1-fast-reasoning | The xAI model to use |

How It Works

The server uses the xAI Responses API with built-in server-side tools (web_search and x_search). When an MCP client calls one of the tools, the server:

1. Sends the query to POST https://api.x.ai/v1/responses with the appropriate tool configuration
2. Grok executes the search, gathers results, and generates a response
3. Citations (source URLs) are extracted from the response annotations
4. The response text and formatted citations are returned to the MCP client

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build
npm run build

# Start (requires XAI_API_KEY env var)
XAI_API_KEY=your-key npm start

License

MIT