Add You.com to Cecli

Give Cecli real-time web search, content extraction, and citation-backed research through the You.com MCP Server.

Cecli is the community-maintained Aider fork with native MCP support, so You.com plugs in without a wrapper or plugin.

Install our docs MCP server

This documentation ships with a Docs MCP Server that gives any MCP-enabled agent a searchDocs tool to search every page here and get back relevant passages with source URLs — no API key required. Point your client at https://you.com/docs/_mcp/server. See the Docs MCP Server guide for setup and examples.

Quick Setup

Add You.com to Your Cecli Config

Edit .cecli.conf.yml and add:

1 mcp-servers:
2   mcpServers:
3     youcom:
4       transport: http
5       url: https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free

This uses the free tier — 100 web searches per day, no signup.

Start Cecli

$ cecli

Verify the Server Loaded

/list-mcp

youcom appears under the loaded servers.

Try It

Search for the latest releases of Bun and summarize the performance improvements.

Higher Rate Limits + Full Toolset

For unlimited queries plus you-contents (page extraction) and you-research (citation-backed deep research):

1 mcp-servers:
2   mcpServers:
3     youcom:
4       transport: http
5       url: https://api.you.com/mcp
6       headers:
7         Authorization: "Bearer <YDC_API_KEY>"

Get a key at you.com/platform.

Local Install (stdio)

If you’d prefer to run the MCP server locally:

1 mcp-servers:
2   mcpServers:
3     youcom:
4       transport: stdio
5       command: npx
6       args: ["-y", "@youdotcom-oss/mcp"]
7       env:
8         YDC_API_KEY: "<YDC_API_KEY>"

Omit env for free-tier behavior.

Pair It With `/web`

Cecli’s built-in /web scrapes one URL you already know. You.com finds the URL worth scraping. Together they cover the full loop:

Search for the current recommended way to configure Ruff's import sorting, then /web the page you find.

This matters most when you run Cecli against a local or offline model. Those models cannot reach the web at all, so search is the only path to anything past their training cutoff.

Keep Long Sessions Alive

Cecli can heartbeat HTTP servers so idle connections do not drop during long editing sessions:

1 mcp-servers:
2   mcpServers:
3     youcom:
4       transport: http
5       url: https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free
6       keepalive_interval: 60

The interval accepts 5 to 300 seconds, and defaults to 300 when omitted.

Quick Demo

Research the Cecli project: who maintains it, what's the release cadence, and what's on the roadmap.

Extract the README from https://github.com/cecli-dev/cecli and summarize the install methods.

Troubleshooting

Server doesn't load

Run cecli --verbose to see MCP server loading details, then confirm .cecli.conf.yml is valid YAML.

Server is configured but inactive

/list-mcp separates loaded servers from configured-but-inactive ones. MCP servers are enabled by default, so an inactive entry usually means it was explicitly disabled with enabled: false, or excluded by a server include/exclude list.

401 errors

Verify the Authorization header is exactly Bearer YDC-... with one space. The keyed endpoint is https://api.you.com/mcp with no ?profile=free.

spawn npx ENOENT

For local installs, install Node.js 18+ and ensure npx is on your PATH.

Connection drops on long sessions

Set keepalive_interval on the server entry. See “Keep Long Sessions Alive” above.

Resources

MCP Server Reference

Endpoint, authentication, and full tool reference.

SDKs & Tools Overview

Browse every You.com SDK, agent tool, and integration.