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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 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

1

Open Windsurf MCP Settings

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

1{
2  "mcpServers": {
3    "you-com": {
4      "serverUrl": "https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free"
5    }
6  }
7}

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 our free tier: 100 web searches 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 + Full Toolset

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

1{
2  "mcpServers": {
3    "you-com": {
4      "serverUrl": "https://api.you.com/mcp",
5      "headers": {
6        "Authorization": "Bearer <YDC_API_KEY>"
7      }
8    }
9  }
10}

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.

SDKs & Tools Overview

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