Getting startedBuild With AgentsAgent Harnesses

Windsurf

View as MarkdownOpen in Claude

Give Windsurf’s Cascade agent real-time web search, content extraction, and citation-backed research through the You.com MCP Server.

Install the Docs MCP server

The Docs MCP server lets your agent search over the entirety of these docs. Free to use.

Install https://you.com/docs/_mcp/server. See the Docs MCP Server guide to learn more.

Quick Setup

1

Open Windsurf MCP Settings

In Windsurf, open Settings → Cascade → Model Context Protocol Servers, click Add Server, then paste:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "you-com": {
      "serverUrl": "https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free"
    }
  }
}

Windsurf gotcha: Windsurf uses serverUrl (not url) for remote MCP servers. Copy-pasting the JSON template from the MCP Server overview page won’t work without this rename.

This uses the free profile: keyless you-search and you-discover, 100 queries per day, no signup.

2

Reload Cascade

Click the refresh icon in the MCP panel, or restart Windsurf. The you-com server should appear with a green status indicator.

3

Try It in Cascade

Open Cascade and prompt:

Search for the latest Astro 5 release notes and summarize the new features.

Cascade will request permission to use you-search on first call.

Higher Rate Limits

For higher limits plus you-contents and you-balance on /mcp. you-research and you-finance need the dedicated paths or an explicit allowlist:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "you-com": {
      "serverUrl": "https://api.you.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <YDC_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Get a key at you.com/platform.

Quick Demo

Research which JavaScript runtimes support native TypeScript execution in 2026, with citations.
Extract https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/upgrade-to/v5/ and summarize the breaking changes section.

Troubleshooting

Check serverUrl, not url. Windsurf’s config format diverges from Claude Desktop’s here.

Cascade may be deferring to its built-in tools. In a prompt, explicitly ask: “Use the you-com MCP server to search…”

Verify the Authorization header is exactly Bearer YDC-... with one space. Do not add extra quotes around the value in the JSON.

Restart Windsurf entirely. In-app refresh is unreliable for tool re-discovery.

Resources

MCP Server Reference

Endpoint, authentication, and full tool reference.

Python SDK

Call the Web Search, Answer, Contents, Research, and Finance Research APIs from Python.

Integrations

LangChain, crewAI, n8n, Zapier, and other third-party frameworks.