wtf is doubao-search-mcp?

This project fixes a specific problem: when someone points Claude Code at a different AI model provider instead of Anthropic's own servers, the built-in web search stops working, because that search feature only runs on Anthropic's servers. This repository adds a replacement web search tool using the MCP protocol, which lets AI coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex call outside tools, backed by a Chinese search service called Doubao Search from Volcengine. The search tool returns fairly long article summaries, up to about 2000 characters per result, along with the exact publish time down to the second and the source name, so an agent does not need a second step to fetch the full article separately. It draws on ByteDance's own content sources, meaning articles from Toutiao news and Douyin's encyclopedia service tend to rank well, and it also works for English queries, returning official documentation and changelog style sources. Each result also reports how many AI model tokens its text would use, which lets an agent control how much text it pulls into its context window. Setup is a single command that registers the tool with an API key from Volcengine's console, which includes 500 free searches per month before any paid usage kicks in. The tool exposes a handful of settings: how many results to return, how long each summary snippet should be, whether to include a few images, and an option to filter out results published more than a certain number of days ago. There is also an optional add-on layer that is off by default and only turns on if a second API key is provided. When enabled, it can compress and filter search results down to a token budget the agent specifies, always preserving the source name, date, and link rather than dropping them. It also adds a separate cross-checking tool that takes a claim or question, searches it from several angles at once, removes duplicate sources, and returns a structured summary of where sources agree, where they disagree, and how confident the answer is, without adding any outside knowledge beyond what was found. The project is released under the MIT license by an independent developer.