exfetch

Browser-aware web execution layer for LLM agents. Combines direct HTTP fetching with a Chrome extension bridge to give AI assistants authenticated, JavaScript-rendered web access.

Architecture

                          +------------------+
                          |   Claude / LLM   |
                          +--------+---------+
                                   |
                    JSON-RPC (stdio or SSE)
                                   |
                          +--------v---------+
                          |   exfetch CLI    |
                          |  (Rust binary)   |
                          +--+-----+------+--+
                             |     |      |
               +-------------+     |      +--------------+
               |                   |                     |
       +-------v-------+  +-------v-------+  +----------v---------+
       |  HTTP Fetcher  |  | Search Engine |  | WebSocket Bridge   |
       | (reqwest+TLS)  |  | (DDG/SearXNG) |  | (tokio-tungstenite)|
       +-------+--------+  +---------------+  +----------+---------+
               |                                         |
       +-------v--------+                      +---------v---------+
       | Content Extract |                      | Chrome Extension  |
       | readability/md  |                      | (Manifest V3)     |
       +----------------+                      +-------------------+

Install

cargo install --path .

CLI Usage

Fetch a page

exfetch fetch https://example.com
exfetch fetch https://example.com --markdown
exfetch fetch https://example.com --json
exfetch fetch https://example.com --raw
exfetch fetch https://example.com --max-length 5000

Search the web

exfetch search "rust programming language"
exfetch search "rust programming" --results 10
exfetch search "rust programming" --fetch          # also fetch top results
exfetch search "rust programming" --json
exfetch search "query" --engine searxng --searxng-url https://searx.be

Start the server

exfetch serve                          # WebSocket server for browser extension
exfetch serve --mcp-stdio              # MCP server over stdin/stdout
exfetch serve --mcp-sse 8080           # MCP server over SSE
exfetch serve --daemon                 # Fork to background

Check status

exfetch status

MCP Setup for Claude Code

Add to your Claude Code MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "exfetch": {
      "command": "exfetch",
      "args": ["serve", "--mcp-stdio"]
    }
  }
}

MCP Setup for claude.ai

For claude.ai, you need a tunnel (cloudflared or ngrok) to expose the SSE endpoint:

# Terminal 1: start exfetch with SSE
exfetch serve --mcp-sse 8080

# Terminal 2: expose via tunnel
cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:8080
# or
ngrok http 8080

Then configure the tunnel URL as a remote MCP server in claude.ai settings.

Chrome Extension

1. Open chrome://extensions/ in Chrome
2. Enable "Developer mode"
3. Click "Load unpacked"
4. Select the extension/chrome/ directory
5. Start the server with exfetch serve
6. The extension will auto-connect via WebSocket

Config File

exfetch reads configuration from ~/.config/exfetch/config.toml:

[defaults]
timeout = 15
user_agent = "exfetch/0.1"
search_engine = "duckduckgo"   # or "searxng"
# searxng_url = "https://searx.be"

[policy]
blocked_domains = []
allow_cookie_read = false
max_requests_per_minute = 60

[tabs]
reuse_strategy = "exact"
open_in_background = true

CLAUDE.md Integration

Add to your project's CLAUDE.md:

Use `exfetch <url>` to fetch web content. Use `exfetch search <query>` to search.

License

MIT