A side-by-side look at the Nexus and Citation Intelligence MCP servers: transport, auth, tools, quality signals, and the config to install either one in Claude, Cursor, Windsurf or VS Code.
Verdict: choose Nexus for search & data extraction work as a local process; choose Citation Intelligence for search & data extraction as a local process. You can also run both side by side in one mcpServers block.
OPENROUTER_API_KEY.search.SERPAPI_KEY, BING_WEBMASTER_API_KEY, GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS.citations_check, domain_am_i_cited, signals_ai_overview.Rows where the two servers differ are marked.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Category | Search & Data Extraction | Search & Data Extraction |
| Quality signal | 59/100 · Good | 57/100 · Good |
| Install command | Confirmed | Confirmed |
| Transport | Local subprocess (stdio) | Local subprocess (stdio) |
| Auth | API key required | API key required |
| Pricing | BYOK (pay the provider) | BYOK (pay the provider) |
| Required env vars | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | SERPAPI_KEYBING_WEBMASTER_API_KEYGOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS |
| Verified owner | Community listing | Community listing |
| GitHub stars | 23 | 9 |
| Directory activity | 3 views 0 installs 0 upvotes | 2 views 0 installs 0 upvotes |
| Tools | 1 | 26 |
| Full listing | View Nexus | View Citation Intelligence |
searchThe main search tool that provides AI-powered search capabilities.citations_checkReturn URLs cited by an AI engine (Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Bing) for a query. Use this when an agent or user wants to see what sources an AI search engine grounds answers on. Requires at least one engine API key; auto-picks the first available.domain_am_i_citedCheck whether a domain is cited by an AI engine across a cluster of queries. Returns per-query presence, rank, and a citation-rate summary. Use to measure visibility for a brand, product, or content site in AI search.signals_ai_overviewCheck whether Google shows an AI Overview for a query, and which URLs it cites. Uses SerpAPI (free tier: 100/month). Set SERPAPI_KEY.domain_cited_forList queries that the given domain has been cited for, served from the local cache. Build up a corpus by calling check_citations or am_i_cited first; cited_for queries it without spending API budget.citations_predictScore citation likelihood for a URL from public signals (Wikipedia link presence, schema.org markup, /llms.txt, GitHub and Reddit references, canonical hygiene, HTTPS). No LLM fired - all heuristic. Returns 0-100 score, grade, signal breakdown, and ranked fixes.panel_trackSave, load, or list named query panels. A panel is a persisted set of queries you want to monitor over time (e.g. editorial-watchlist). Use action=save with queries[] to create, action=load to read, action=list to enumerate. Panels live under <config>/panels/<name>.json.panel_runRun a saved panel through am_i_cited and append a timestamped snapshot. Side effects: makes external API calls to the configured AI engine (costs API quota); writes one snapshot file to disk at <config>/snapshots/<panel>/<iso>.json. Requires at least one engine API key (same as am_i_cited). Returns per-query citation presence and a citation_rate summary for the run. Use panel_track to create a panel first; use citations_trend to read the accumulated trend after multiple runs.report_visibilityTurnkey AI visibility report for a domain across a query set. Composes check_citations over every query (or a saved panel) and returns the metrics AI-visibility trackers sell as a dashboard, in one call: mention frequency (citation_rate), share_of_voice vs competitors, average rank when cited, and brand sentiment from the answer text. Side effects: one check_citations call per query (costs API quota for uncached queries; cached queries are free). Returns structured summary + top_domains + per_query, plus a rendered Markdown report (include_markdown=true) suitable for a public page. Provide queries[] or a panel name. Same engine selection as check_citations.citations_trendReport citation rate over time for a panel from stored snapshots. Read-only; cache-only — makes no API calls to any AI engine and costs no API quota. Reads snapshot files from <config>/snapshots/<panel>/. Returns: snapshots[] (one entry per panel_run invocation, each with timestamp and citation_rate), plus per-query deltas (gained/lost/unchanged) comparing first vs last snapshot. Returns an empty series when no snapshots exist yet. No auth required. No rate limits. Use panel_run to accumulate snapshots first; use since to restrict the time window.competitors_compareRun predict_citation on 2-10 URLs and return a side-by-side signal table plus a list of signals where the URLs diverge. Use to compare your URL to top-cited competitors for the same query.signals_wikipediaList Wikipedia articles that reference the given domain. Read-only. One HTTPS GET to the Wikipedia API (en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=exturlusage). No auth required; no API keys; no rate limits beyond Wikipedia's public API fair-use policy (~1 request/second). Returns article titles and URLs. Wikipedia backlinks are the highest-lift signal for LLM training corpora — a domain cited from Wikipedia is far more likely to appear in AI training data and citation pools. Use lang to query non-English Wikipedias.audit_sitemapFetch a sitemap.xml (or sitemap index) and run predict_citation on every URL. Returns results sorted worst-score-first. Surfaces systemic issues across a whole site in one pass. Zero engine keys needed.Paste either block (or both) into your client config, e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json. We only show a config when the install command is confirmed.
{
"mcpServers": {
"adawalli-nexus": {
"command": "bunx",
"args": [
"nexus-mcp"
],
"env": {
"OPENROUTER_API_KEY": "YOUR_OPENROUTER_API_KEY_HERE"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"automatelab-tech-citation-intelligence": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@automatelab/citation-intelligence"
],
"env": {
"SERPAPI_KEY": "YOUR_SERPAPI_KEY_HERE",
"BING_WEBMASTER_API_KEY": "YOUR_BING_WEBMASTER_API_KEY_HERE",
"GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS": "YOUR_GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS_HERE"
}
}
}
}