Giskard Search

What giskard09/giskard-search MCP server does

The giskard09/giskard-search MCP server exposes web and news search to MCP-compatible agents. Search access is pay-per-use rather than account- or subscription-based. The listed search price for Lightning is 10 sats per invoice, while the Arbitrum flow provides payment details for an on-chain transaction.

Available operations include creating a Lightning invoice, obtaining Arbitrum payment information, searching the web, searching recent news, and reporting whether a result was useful. The README also documents a get_status() health-check tool that returns service and dependency information.

How it works

The payment flow must happen before a search request. With Lightning, an agent calls get_invoice(), pays the returned invoice with a Lightning wallet, and passes the payment hash to search_web or another applicable search operation. With Arbitrum, the agent calls get_arbitrum_invoice(), pays on Arbitrum One, and submits the transaction hash with the search request.

The server is intended to run as a local or self-hosted HTTP service. The example MCP configuration connects clients to http://localhost:8004/sse. Search functionality is built around DuckDuckGo Search, while the payment stack includes phoenixd, x402, and Arbitrum payment verification.

Setup and configuration

The giskard09/giskard-search MCP server can run from the published container image ghcr.io/giskard09/giskard-search. The Docker example maps port 8004 and sets PHOENIXD_URL and PHOENIXD_PASSWORD. The documented default phoenixd URL for a host-based Docker deployment is http://host.docker.internal:9740.

Source setup uses Python dependencies including MCP, httpx, DuckDuckGo Search, python-dotenv, FastAPI, Uvicorn, web3, and x402. The README instructs operators to provide PHOENIXD_PASSWORD and OWNER_PRIVATE_KEY in a .env file before starting server.py. The private key is used for the Arbitrum payment configuration, so operators should handle it as a secret.

Tools and capabilities

• get_invoice: creates the Lightning payment request listed at 10 sats.
• get_arbitrum_invoice: returns payment information including a contract and service ID.
• search_web: performs web search after payment verification.
• search_news: performs recent-news search after payment verification.
• report: records whether a search result was useful.
• get_status(): reports service name, version, port, uptime, health, and dependencies.

The giskard09/giskard-search MCP server documents the Arbitrum One payment contract and an x402 wallet address for its on-chain payment flow.

Limitations and notes

Search calls are not free to operate: an agent must complete the relevant payment flow before searching. Lightning use depends on a reachable phoenixd instance and a Lightning wallet. Arbitrum use requires an Arbitrum One transaction and the server's private-key configuration.

The provided setup examples expose an SSE endpoint on port 8004; client configuration must point to that endpoint. The material does not identify specific desktop or editor clients, so compatibility should be evaluated through their support for MCP SSE connections.