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Ref Tools Ref Tools MCP

Searches technical documentation and fetches relevant page content for AI coding agents through MCP.

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Install Ref Tools Ref Tools MCP

Pick your client, then add it in one click or paste the config.

STDIONode.js
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "ref-tools-mcp@latest"
      ],
      "env": {
        "REF_API_KEY": "YOUR_VALUE_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

Settings → Developer → Edit Config, merge this into mcpServers, then fully quit and reopen Claude Desktop.

Values are written into the snippet above so you can paste it as is. They never leave your browser.

We couldn’t confirm it starts correctly

The install command started, but didn't respond the way we expected when we tried to talk to it.

npx ref-tools-mcp@latest

initialize succeeded but no response to tools/list.

This is an experimental automated check and can have false negatives — missing environment variables, a slow cold install, etc. It doesn’t necessarily mean something’s wrong. Last checked 1mo ago.

Overview

The ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp MCP server gives AI coding agents token-efficient access to current documentation for APIs, services, libraries, web resources, and other technical materials. It searches for relevant documentation, then reads selected URLs as Markdown while using MCP session history to avoid repeated results and narrow page content to relevant sections. Use it when an agent needs implementation facts or code examples without loading entire documentation sites into context. It runs through a recommended streamable HTTP endpoint or a legacy local stdio package.

Use cases

  • Search API documentation for endpoint details
  • Read only the relevant section of a long reference page
  • Find code examples across public technical documentation
  • Refine documentation searches during an agent session

Key features

  • Natural-language technical documentation search
  • URL-to-Markdown page reading
  • Session-aware result filtering
  • Relevant-section extraction from long pages
  • Support for web, GitHub, private resources, and PDFs

Tools2

What Ref Tools Ref Tools MCP lets your agent do. Expand a tool for its parameters.

Self-reported~2 tokens of context

Security & health

What it can reach and how reliably it runs — from our own checks, not the maintainer’s claims.

ActiveLast checked Today

Recent health check succeeded.

52/52 checks healthy over the last 91d

Supply-chain signal

No high-severity advisories surfaced by our automated scan.

Critical 0High 0Medium 0Low 0

Scanned 6d ago via OSV.dev · ref-tools-mcp@latest (npm)

Adoption & maintenance

Factual signals from GitHub, npm, and our automated checks — not a rating.

GitHub stars1.2kStargazers on the source repository.
npm downloads4.3kPackage downloads in the last 30 days.
Last commit3d agoMost recent push to the default branch.
Install checkInconclusiveStarted but did not complete the MCP handshake in our test.
Tools exposed2Callable tools this server registers over MCP.
Directory activity3 viewsConfig copies, upvotes, and views on AllMCPs.

How Ref Tools Ref Tools MCP works

What ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp does

The ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp MCP server connects an AI coding client to Ref’s documentation search and reading service. It is intended for questions about APIs, services, libraries, and other technical resources. Search can cover public web and GitHub documentation, as well as private resources such as repositories and PDFs.

The service is designed to return the context needed for a coding task rather than an entire documentation site. It can help an agent locate an endpoint, compare implementation options, find a code example, or identify the relevant section of a long reference page.

How it works

An agent starts with a natural-language documentation query. Ref returns relevant results and URLs, which the agent can then pass to the URL-reading tool. The reader converts the selected page to Markdown and uses the session’s prior search history to focus on the most relevant material.

Search history also affects repeated searches. Results already returned in the same session are not repeated, allowing an agent to refine its query while continuing to explore additional sources. When a page is large, Ref returns the most relevant portion, with the README describing a target of roughly 5,000 tokens rather than routinely placing 20,000 or more tokens of unrelated page content into context.

This session-aware workflow makes the ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp MCP server most suitable for coding agents that can search, inspect a result, and refine the question as they work.

Setup and configuration

The recommended deployment uses Ref’s streamable HTTP MCP endpoint:

config.json
{
  "Ref": {
    "type": "http",
    "url": "https://api.ref.tools/mcp?apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY"
  }
}

The repository also contains a legacy stdio server. It can be launched with npx ref-tools-mcp@latest and requires the REF_API_KEY environment variable:

config.json
{
  "Ref": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["ref-tools-mcp@latest"],
    "env": { "REF_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY" }
  }
}

An API key is obtained by signing up through Ref. For local development, the repository documents npm install, npm run build, npm run watch, and npm run inspect; the latter uses MCP Inspector for testing and monitoring.

Tools and capabilities

The server exposes two MCP operations:

  • query: searches technical documentation using a required natural-language query.
  • url: fetches a specified webpage and converts it to Markdown for reading.

Limitations and notes

The repository’s local package is the legacy stdio implementation; streamable HTTP is the recommended setup. The server depends on an API key, and the material does not specify pricing, rate limits, indexing coverage, or guaranteed freshness for individual sources. Search and page reading are separate operations, so an agent generally needs a result URL before it can request focused page content.

The ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp MCP server is focused on documentation retrieval.

Read the full README View source on GitHub

Reviews

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Frequently Asked Questions about Ref Tools Ref Tools MCP

ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp is an MCP server that connects AI coding agents to Ref’s technical documentation service. Its main tools search documentation with a natural-language query and fetch a URL as focused Markdown. It supports documentation for APIs, services, libraries, web pages, GitHub resources, private repositories, and PDFs.

Install the legacy stdio version with npx using `ref-tools-mcp@latest`, or configure the recommended streamable HTTP endpoint at `https://api.ref.tools/mcp?apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY`. The stdio configuration requires the `REF_API_KEY` environment variable.

Yes, ref-tools-ref-tools-mcp works with Cursor. The README provides Cursor installation links and example configurations for both the recommended HTTP connection and the legacy stdio command.

It uses session search history to avoid repeating results and selects relevant sections when reading a page. This can keep a large documentation page from contributing its entire contents to the agent context.

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