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"
      }
    }
  }
}

<details> <summary>Alternative: Local build</summary>

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"
      }
    }
  }
}

</details>

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