@yawlabs/fetch-mcp
A comprehensive HTTP fetch MCP server for AI assistants. Bring-your-own client: runs as a stdio MCP server so any MCP-compatible client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, mcph, …) can fetch web content safely.
One click adds this to your local Yaw MCP config so it's available in every Yaw Terminal session. Or install manually below.
What it gives the model
| Tool | What it does | |------|--------------| | http_get / http_head / http_options | Bare HTTP requests with headers, auth, timeout, size cap, retry | | http_post / http_put / http_patch / http_delete | Write-method HTTP with JSON or raw body | | fetch_html_to_markdown | GET a page and convert to clean markdown (3–8× smaller than raw HTML) | | fetch_html_to_text | GET a page and convert to plain text with block structure preserved | | fetch_reader | Reader-mode extraction — isolates the article body and returns title + markdown | | fetch_meta | Extract <head> metadata: title, description, OpenGraph, Twitter cards, JSON-LD, feeds, icons | | fetch_links | Extract every outbound link, resolved to absolute URLs, classified internal/external | | fetch_sitemap | Parse sitemap.xml (including gzipped and sitemap-index chaining) | | fetch_feed | Parse an RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 feed into entries | | fetch_robots | Parse a site's robots.txt, return the verdict for a given path & user-agent |
Safety
SSRF protection is on by default. The server refuses requests to:
- Loopback (
127.0.0.0/8,::1) - RFC1918 private ranges (
10/8,172.16/12,192.168/16) - Link-local (
169.254/16,fe80::/10) — including the cloud metadata endpoint169.254.169.254 - CGNAT (
100.64/10) - Unique-local IPv6 (
fc00::/7) - Multicast / broadcast
- IPv4-mapped IPv6 (
::ffff:0:0/96) re-checked against the IPv4 rules - Non-
http/httpsschemes (file://,gopher://,javascript:, …) - Hostname
localhostand any*.localhost
DNS is resolved once per redirect hop, every returned address is checked, and the verified IP is pinned into the HTTP dispatcher so the subsequent TCP connection dials that exact address — closing the DNS-rebinding TOCTOU window. Authorization headers are stripped on cross-origin redirects. A 302 to http://127.0.0.1 through a public host gets caught. Set allow_private_hosts: true per-request when you really do need internal access (e.g. development).
Install & run
# One-off (auto-updates each spawn via @latest)
npx -y @yawlabs/fetch-mcp@latest
# Or globally
npm i -g @yawlabs/fetch-mcp
fetch-mcpRequires Node ≥20.
Configure in Claude Code / Claude Desktop
Add to your client's MCP config (usually claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.claude.json):
{
"mcpServers": {
"fetch": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@yawlabs/fetch-mcp@latest"]
}
}
}Or via mcph:
mcph add fetchTool reference
http_get, http_post, http_put, http_patch, http_delete, http_head, http_options
Common parameters:
| Field | Type | Default | Meaning | |-------|------|---------|---------| | url | string | — | Absolute URL | | headers | object | — | Custom request headers | | timeout_ms | int | 10000 | Request timeout | | max_bytes | int | 5242880 (5 MiB) | Truncate body if larger | | max_redirects | int | 5 | Redirect hops allowed | | retries | int | 0 | Retry count on 408/425/429/5xx with backoff (honors Retry-After) | | user_agent | string | @yawlabs/fetch-mcp/<v> | User-Agent override | | basic_auth | {username,password} | — | Injects Authorization: Basic … | | bearer_token | string | — | Injects Authorization: Bearer … | | allow_private_hosts | bool | false | Bypass SSRF block | | decode_text | bool | auto | When unset, auto-detects by response Content-Type (text for text/*, JSON, XML, JS, form-urlencoded; binary otherwise). Set explicitly true to force text decoding, false to force base64 in body_base64. |
Body-capable tools (POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE) also take:
| Field | Type | Meaning | |-------|------|---------| | body | string | Raw request body | | body_json | any | Structured body — encoded as JSON, Content-Type: application/json set automatically | | content_type | string | Overrides Content-Type |
Response shape:
{
ok: boolean;
status: number;
statusText: string;
url: string; // final URL after redirects
headers: Record<string,string>;
body_text?: string;
body_base64?: string; // when decode_text=false
json?: unknown; // auto-parsed when response is application/json
truncated?: boolean; // set when max_bytes hit
redirects?: string[]; // chain of intermediate URLs
duration_ms: number;
error?: string;
}fetch_html_to_markdown
GET the URL, strip scripts/styles/iframes/svg/canvas plus <nav>, <footer>, <aside>, convert to atx-headed markdown with fenced code blocks and dash bullets. Intended for feeding pages into an LLM without blowing the context budget.
fetch_html_to_text
Same fetch, but emits plain text with block-level structure preserved as newlines. Useful when the model doesn't need markdown formatting.
fetch_reader
Isolates the main article body using, in order: <article>, <main>, itemprop="articleBody", common CMS class names (post-content, entry-content, etc.), then <body> as fallback. Returns:
{
url: string; // final URL after redirects
title?: string; // og:title, then <title>, then <h1>
byline?: string; // meta[name=author] / article:author
wordCount: number;
markdown: string; // main content converted to markdown
}fetch_meta
GET a URL and return its head metadata without downloading the full body (caps at 2 MiB by default):
{
url: string;
title?: string;
description?: string;
canonical?: string;
language?: string;
robots?: string;
og: Record<string, string>; // first value per key (og:title, og:image, og:type, ...)
twitter: Record<string, string>; // first value per key
article: Record<string, string>; // first value per key
ogAll: Record<string, string[]>; // only keys that appear > once (e.g. multiple og:image)
twitterAll: Record<string, string[]>;
articleAll: Record<string, string[]>;
icons: Array<{ rel: string; href: string; sizes?: string }>;
feeds: Array<{ href: string; title?: string; type?: string }>; // RSS/Atom
jsonLd: unknown[]; // parsed application/ld+json blocks
}fetch_links
GET a page and return every <a href> with text, resolved to absolute URLs. Respects <base href>. Skips #, javascript:, mailto:, tel:, data:, file:. Each link is classified internal or external vs. the page host. Optional filter/dedupe/limit.
fetch_sitemap
Fetch a sitemap.xml or sitemap-index and return the URL list:
{
sitemaps: string[]; // indexes followed, in order
urlCount: number;
truncated: boolean; // hit max_urls
urls: Array<{
loc: string;
lastmod?: string;
changefreq?: string;
priority?: number;
}>;
}Gzipped .xml.gz sitemaps are auto-decompressed. max_depth controls how many levels of sitemap-index to follow (default 1). Setting max_depth: 0 on a sitemap-index returns the index's childSitemaps list without fetching any child (useful to discover structure cheaply). Partial failures — one child sitemap 500s while others succeed — are returned under warnings rather than aborting the whole call.
fetch_feed
Parse an RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 feed:
{
kind: "rss" | "atom" | "unknown";
title?: string;
description?: string;
link?: string;
updated?: string;
entryCount: number;
truncated: boolean; // hit limit
entries: Array<{
title?: string;
link?: string;
id?: string;
published?: string;
updated?: string;
author?: string;
summary?: string;
content?: string;
categories?: string[];
}>;
}fetch_robots
Fetches <origin>/robots.txt, parses it, and returns:
{
robotsUrl: string;
status: number;
userAgent: string;
path: string;
allowed: boolean;
matchedRule: string | null; // the longest-match Allow/Disallow that decided it
crawlDelay: number | null; // from the matched group
sitemaps: string[]; // top-level Sitemap: declarations
rawRobotsText: string; // first 512KB
}The parser follows Google's rules: longest match wins, is a wildcard segment, $ anchors the end of the path, specific user-agent group beats the wildcard group when the UA matches (comparison uses the length of the actually-matched agent token, not the group's first agent). Allow beats Disallow on equal-length ties.
Development
npm install
npm run build
npm test # vitest
npm run lint # biome
npm run typecheckTests spin up a local loopback HTTP server on 127.0.0.1:0 to exercise the real request/response path — no mocking of HTTP. SSRF tests verify that the default-deny still applies to that local server unless the request opts into allow_private_hosts.
License
MIT © Yaw Labs
Links
- npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@yawlabs/fetch-mcp
- issues: https://github.com/YawLabs/fetch-mcp/issues
- Yaw Labs: https://mcp.hosting
