llmstxt-doc-search
Live, ranked search across any number of llms.txt documentation sites - Strands, Kiro, the AWS guides, and whatever you add at runtime.

llmstxt-doc-search is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that turns the llms.txt index a documentation site publishes into a fast, ranked search tool your agent can call. It indexes titles at startup, ranks queries with BM25, and fetches the full document only when you open a result - so you get current docs with almost no local storage. Built on the search engine from @praveenc/mcp-docs-server, generalized to a runtime registry of sources.
Why
An llms.txt file is a curated index of a doc site's pages, published for tools like this one to consume. They can be large - AWS Bedrock's lists roughly a thousand documents - so downloading everything is wasteful and goes stale fast.
This server takes a leaner approach:
- Title-only index, built lazily. On first search of a source, only the page titles are indexed. That is fast to build and tiny to hold in memory.
- Ranked with BM25. Queries are scored with BM25 plus Porter stemming, bigrams, and markdown-aware weighting (headers, code, and links count for more). Technical terms like
mcp, json, and stdio are preserved rather than stemmed.
- Content on demand. The full markdown or HTML of a result is fetched only when you call
fetch_doc.
The result is a good fit for broad, fast-moving reference material - the opposite tradeoff to snapshotting docs into a local vault.
Installation
Quick start (recommended)
Add the server to your MCP client configuration (Claude Desktop, Kiro, and others). It is downloaded and run on demand via npx - no manual build:
{
"mcpServers": {
"llmstxt-doc-search": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@praveenc/llmstxt-doc-search"]
}
}
}
Global install
npm install -g @praveenc/llmstxt-doc-search
Then point your MCP client at the installed binary:
{
"mcpServers": {
"llmstxt-doc-search": {
"command": "llmstxt-doc-search"
}
}
}
Quick start
Once the server is connected, the typical flow is three calls:
docs_home() - orient yourself: see the registered sources and how to search and fetch.
search_docs("prompt caching", "aws-bedrock-userguide") - rank matching docs. Omit the source to search everything.
fetch_doc(url) - read the full content of a result you like.
Add your own source at any time and it is indexed immediately and persisted for future runs:
add_doc_source("langgraph", "https://langchain-ai.github.io/langgraph/llms.txt")
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|
docs_home() | Orientation: registered sources plus how to search and fetch. Call this first. |
list_doc_sources() | List sources with their llms.txt URL and index status. |
search_docs(query, source?, k?) | BM25 search. Omit source to search all, or scope to one. Returns ranked {source, url, title, score, snippet}. k defaults to 5 (max 50). |
fetch_doc(url) | Fetch the full content of a result URL. The URL must belong to a registered source. |
add_doc_source(name, llms_txt_url) | Register and index a new llms.txt source at runtime. Persisted. |
remove_doc_source(name) | Remove a registered source. |
refresh_doc_source(name) | Re-index a source to pick up new or changed docs. |
Default sources
Seeded into the registry on first run:
strands, kiro, aws-bedrock-userguide, aws-agentic-ai-lens, aws-bedrock-agentcore-devguide, mcp.
The registry is persisted at ~/.config/llmstxt-doc-search/sources.json (override with LLMSTXT_REGISTRY_PATH). Anything you add, remove, or refresh at runtime is saved there.
Configuration
All configuration is via environment variables; none are required.
| Variable | Default | Meaning |
|---|
LLMSTXT_REGISTRY_PATH | ~/.config/llmstxt-doc-search/sources.json | Where the source registry is persisted. |
LLMSTXT_SNIPPET_HYDRATE_MAX | 5 | How many top hits to fetch when building result snippets. |
LLMSTXT_LOG_LEVEL | info | Log verbosity: debug, info, warn, or error. Logs go to stderr only. |
Testing with MCP Inspector
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector npx -y @praveenc/llmstxt-doc-search
Development
Clone the repository for local work:
git clone https://github.com/praveenc/llmstxt-doc-search.git
cd llmstxt-doc-search
npm install
Commands
npm run dev
npm test
npm run typecheck
npm run build
npm run inspect:dev
Local MCP client config (development)
Point your client at a source checkout instead of the published package:
{
"mcpServers": {
"llmstxt-doc-search": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["tsx", "/ABS/PATH/llmstxt-doc-search/src/index.ts"]
}
}
}
Or, after npm run build, at the compiled entry point:
{
"mcpServers": {
"llmstxt-doc-search": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["/ABS/PATH/llmstxt-doc-search/dist/index.js"]
}
}
}
Architecture
src/
โโโ index.ts # MCP server entry point and tool registration
โโโ config.ts # Defaults and environment configuration
โโโ tools/
โ โโโ docs.ts # search_docs, fetch_doc, and source management
โโโ utils/
โโโ doc-fetcher.ts # HTTP fetching, redirect handling, HTML parsing
โโโ indexer.ts # BM25 search index
โโโ registry.ts # Persisted source registry
โโโ store.ts # In-memory document store
โโโ text-processor.ts # Tokenization and snippet helpers
โโโ url-validator.ts # SSRF guard and URL validation
โโโ stopwords.ts # Stop-word list
โโโ logger.ts # Logging utilities
Search algorithm
Ranking uses BM25 (Best Matching 25) with several enhancements:
- Porter stemming matches word variants (for example,
running and run).
- Bigrams capture phrase matches (for example,
prompt caching).
- Weighted scoring boosts title matches (3-8x), headers (4x), code blocks (2x), and link text (2x).
- Domain-term preservation keeps technical terms like
mcp, json, and stdio unstemmed so they match exactly.
Security
This server fetches user-supplied URLs at runtime, so its SSRF surface is guarded in depth:
- Scoped fetches.
fetch_doc only retrieves URLs under a registered source's origin and path prefix, matched on a path boundary rather than a raw string prefix. There is no arbitrary fetch.
- Scheme allow-list. Non-
http(s) schemes are rejected.
- Range-based address blocking. Private and reserved destinations are blocked using IP range classification (
ipaddr.js), covering decimal, octal, and hex IPv4, IPv4-mapped IPv6, loopback, link-local, unique-local, carrier-grade NAT, and other reserved ranges - not just a hostname regex.
- Connection-time validation. The resolved IP is checked at connection time via a custom DNS lookup, closing DNS-rebinding, and every redirect hop is re-validated.
- Bounded responses. Response bodies are capped at 10 MB to limit memory and regular-expression (ReDoS) exposure.
Runtime dependencies report zero known vulnerabilities.
License
MIT - Copyright (c) 2026 Praveen Chamarthi
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. If you find a bug or have an idea:
- Open an issue describing the problem or proposal.
- For code changes, fork the repo and create a feature branch.
- Keep changes focused, add or update tests, and make sure
npm test, npm run typecheck, and npm run build all pass.
- Open a pull request against
main with a clear description of what changed and why.
Commit messages follow the Conventional Commits style.
Support
- Questions and ideas: open a GitHub issue.
- Bugs: please include your MCP client, the tool call you made, and any relevant logs (set
LLMSTXT_LOG_LEVEL=debug for more detail).
- Security issues: open an issue marked as security-sensitive, or contact the maintainer directly rather than posting exploit details publicly.
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