Lookup

Lookup

Lookup is a high-performance, lightweight MCP server written in Rust for web and torrent search, page reading, research, news, weather, time, calculations, and unit conversion. Web search supports keyless SearXNG plus optional Exa, Brave, Ollama, Tavily, and local Chromium providers. It is designed for LM Studio and other MCP clients that work with local models.

Setup

Lookup compiles directly to a native release binary. Keyless mode operates with zero external dependencies.

macOS & Linux

The setup script ensures Rust/Cargo is installed (via rustup if needed), builds the release binary, and performs an MCP startup check:

chmod +x setup.sh
./setup.sh

No sudo is required.

Windows

Run PowerShell or Command Prompt as your standard user:

# PowerShell
.\setup.ps1

Or from CMD / double-click:

setup.cmd

The script automatically downloads rustup-init.exe if cargo is not present, builds the release binary, and outputs the MCP configuration.

MCP Configuration

At the end of setup, the script prints an MCP configuration containing the exact executable path for your system:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "Lookup": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/Lookup/target/release/lookup",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

On Windows, paths will use backslashes (e.g. C:\\path\\to\\Lookup\\target\\release\\lookup.exe).

Copy that configuration into LM Studio or your MCP client, then restart or reload the client.

Manual Build

If cargo is already installed on your system:

cargo build --release

The compiled executable will be located at target/release/lookup (or target\release\lookup.exe on Windows).

Update

Run the updater from the Lookup folder:

# macOS / Linux
./update.sh

# Windows
.\update.ps1
# or
update.cmd

The updater pulls the latest source and rebuilds the optimized release binary.

Tools

For most web questions, use search_and_fetch. Natural requests that mention a torrent or magnet link are automatically routed through torrent-aware search.

Search providers

Lookup works out-of-the-box without API keys:

• SearXNG provides web search.
• Direct HTTP extraction reads webpages.
• Open-Meteo provides weather and geocoding.
• Time, calculations, and unit conversion are built in.

Public SearXNG instances are best effort. For more predictable service, set a trusted instance or enable an optional provider. Exa and Brave use their HTTP APIs directly.

Chromium screenshots

Use screenshot_url to capture visual page content as an MCP image result:

{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "width": 1280,
  "height": 720
}

Screenshots use a secure temporary directory, are limited to a 1920×1080 viewport and a 5 MiB PNG, and inherit Chromium's timeout, public-IP validation, DNS pinning, and cross-host request restrictions. Screenshot files are deleted immediately after being read and are not stored in SQLite.

Chromium search

Set provider: "chromium" in web_search, search_and_fetch, research, or news_search to perform a browser-rendered DuckDuckGo HTML search without a search API key. Queries, domain filters, and recency filters are URL-encoded, and result links are validated and deduplicated. Browser search is slower and may encounter anti-bot challenges, so provider: "auto" uses it only as a last-resort fallback after the existing search providers.

{
  "query": "fun facts about Vancouver",
  "provider": "chromium",
  "max_results": 5
}

Browser Control

Browser control is opt-in: set LOOKUP_BROWSER_ENABLED=true to enable it. Lookup runs a local Chromium, Chrome, Brave, or Edge browser with an isolated profile; it can run headless or visible and does not use a remote browser service. Prefer static tools such as search_and_fetch, read_url, and screenshot_url whenever they can complete the task.

Tools cover opening/listing/navigating tabs, compact snapshots, clicks, typing, keys, scrolling, bounded waits, readable text, screenshots rendered as MCP images in chat, history/reload, closing, and size-limited JavaScript evaluation. Lookup can run its isolated browser alongside an already-open personal browser. To control tabs in an existing browser session, start that browser with a local debugging port and set LOOKUP_BROWSER_DEBUG_URL=http://127.0.0.1:9222; Lookup imports its open tabs. Chrome cannot enable CDP retroactively on a process started without debugging, and non-localhost CDP endpoints are always rejected.

Exa

Set EXA_API_KEY to enable Exa Search. Use provider: "exa" in web_search, search_and_fetch, research, or news_search to require Exa:

{
  "query": "latest Rust security announcements",
  "provider": "exa",
  "max_results": 5,
  "recency": "month"
}

With provider: "auto", Lookup uses configured providers first and Exa remains a fallback before keyless SearXNG. Domain and recency filters are passed to Exa's native search filters. Exa is used for search; page content is read using the configured fetch flow, which tries Chromium first and then falls back to other extraction providers and direct HTTP.

Add keys or provider settings to the MCP server's env object:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "Lookup": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/Lookup/target/release/lookup",
      "args": [],
      "env": {
        "EXA_API_KEY": "your-exa-key",
        "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-key",
        "SEARXNG_URL": "https://your-searxng.example"
      }
    }
  }
}

Multiple SearXNG instances can be separated with commas.

Torrent search

Torrent results can include the name, size, seeders, leechers, source, trust signals, direct link, and BitTorrent info hash. Lookup validates magnet syntax and torrent metainfo when possible, then removes duplicate results by info hash.

Lookup combines normal web results with Internet Archive, built-in HTML indexer sources, and optional Torznab-compatible indexers.

Configure Torznab endpoints with a comma-separated list:

{
  "env": {
    "TORZNAB_URLS": "https://indexer.example/api?apikey=your-key"
  }
}

Add generic HTML indexer search templates with {query} as the placeholder:

{
  "env": {
    "TORRENT_SITE_URLS": "https://indexer.example/search?q={query}"
  }
}

Only obtain content that you are authorized to access. A trust signal describes the source; it is not a legal or content-safety determination.

Configuration

Private, loopback, local, and link-local destinations are blocked by default to reduce server-side request forgery risk. Only set LOOKUP_ALLOW_PRIVATE_URLS=true when you intentionally need access to trusted local services.

Persistent SQLite cache

Unless LOOKUP_CACHE_DB is set to memory or off, cached tool data is stored in SQLite and survives restarts. This includes:

• Geocoded location records for 30 days (geocode:* keys)
• Weather forecasts for 10 minutes (weather:* keys)
• Search, research, page-reading, and news results for their configured TTLs

The current_time result is intentionally calculated live on every request so SQLite never returns a stale clock value. Timezone information included in a cached weather response is persisted with that weather record.

Examples

Find the latest LM Studio release.
Research whether Wi-Fi 7 is worth upgrading to.
What's the weather in Vancouver tomorrow?
Read https://example.com.
Find the official Debian torrent.

Run the MCP server directly with:

./target/release/lookup

Lookup caches repeated requests in memory and SQLite, limits output size, cools down failing providers, and guards against repetitive tool-call loops. When a supported Chromium-based browser is available, automatic page reads try bounded local rendering first and then fall back to configured extraction providers and direct HTTP. DNS is pinned to the validated public target and cross-host browser requests are blocked.

License

MIT