auth-fetch-mcp

MCP server that lets AI assistants fetch content from authenticated web pages.

When your AI tries to read a URL that requires login, this tool opens a real browser for you to sign in — then captures the page content as cleaned HTML. Sessions are saved locally, so you only log in once per service.

Demo

Quick Start

Claude Code

claude mcp add --scope user auth-fetch -- npx auth-fetch-mcp@latest

.mcp.json (Cursor, Windsurf, etc.)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "auth-fetch": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["auth-fetch-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Chromium is auto-installed on first run if not already present.

How It Works

1. Ask your AI to read any authenticated page — just paste the URL.
2. A browser window opens automatically and navigates to the page.
3. Log in as you normally would (supports SSO, 2FA, CAPTCHA — anything).
4. Click the "📸 Capture" button in the bottom-right corner when ready.
5. The page content is captured as cleaned HTML (noise elements stripped, media tags preserved), the browser closes, and your AI receives the content.

Tools

auth_fetch

The primary tool. Fetches page content using a real browser, opening a window for login if needed. Returns cleaned HTML with noise elements (nav, footer, scripts, etc.) stripped and media tags (<img>, <video>, <iframe>) preserved.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
url	string	yes	The URL to fetch content from (only http/https; see URL restrictions)
wait_for	string	no	CSS selector to wait for before capturing (useful for SPAs)

download_media

Downloads files from URLs using saved browser sessions. Use this to lazily download images, videos, or other files found in auth_fetch results. The browser's saved cookies handle authentication automatically — no need to log in again.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
urls	string[]	yes	One or more URLs to download (only http/https; see URL restrictions)
output_dir	string	no	Subdirectory under ~/.auth-fetch-mcp/downloads/ to save files into. Absolute paths or .. segments that escape this root are rejected. Defaults to ~/.auth-fetch-mcp/downloads/<timestamp>/

Example flow:

1. auth_fetch("https://notion.so/my-page")
   → Returns HTML with <img src="https://s3.notion.so/signed-url..."/> tags

2. AI reads the HTML, identifies an image it needs

3. download_media(["https://s3.notion.so/signed-url..."])
   → Downloads the image using saved session cookies
   → Returns { localPath: "~/.auth-fetch-mcp/downloads/.../file-1.png" }

list_pages

Lists all open tabs in the browser with their URLs and titles.

close_browser

Closes the browser window. Login sessions are saved and will be reused next time.

URL restrictions

To prevent SSRF (server-side request forgery) attacks driven by prompt injection, both auth_fetch and download_media validate every URL before dispatching it:

• Only http and https schemes are allowed. file:, data:, javascript:, etc. are rejected.
• The hostname is resolved via DNS and the resulting IP is checked. Requests are rejected when the address falls in private, loopback, link-local, CGNAT, or multicast ranges:
  • IPv4: 0.0.0.0/8, 10.0.0.0/8, 100.64.0.0/10, 127.0.0.0/8, 169.254.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.0.0.0/24, 192.168.0.0/16, 198.18.0.0/15, 224.0.0.0/4, 240.0.0.0/4
  • IPv6: ::, ::1, fc00::/7, fe80::/10, ff00::/8, IPv4-mapped equivalents
• download_media additionally constrains output_dir to stay inside ~/.auth-fetch-mcp/downloads/. Absolute paths and .. segments that escape this root are rejected.

Allowing private hosts

If you need to access a host on your local machine or LAN (e.g., a dev server, NAS, or Tailscale node), opt in with environment variables:

Variable	Effect
AUTH_FETCH_ALLOW_PRIVATE	Set to 1, true, or yes to disable all private/loopback/link-local checks. Most permissive — use only in trusted environments.
AUTH_FETCH_ALLOW_HOSTS	Comma-separated allowlist of hostnames or IPs. Matches against the URL's hostname and every resolved IP.

.mcp.json example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "auth-fetch": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["auth-fetch-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {
        "AUTH_FETCH_ALLOW_HOSTS": "localhost,127.0.0.1,192.168.1.10"
      }
    }
  }
}

Heads up: enabling these variables re-opens those hosts to any prompt the MCP client (LLM) processes. Prefer the narrowest possible allowlist over AUTH_FETCH_ALLOW_PRIVATE=1, and only enable them in environments you trust.

Data Storage

All data is stored locally under ~/.auth-fetch-mcp/. Nothing is sent to external servers.

What	Where	When	Persistent?
Browser sessions (cookies, local storage)	~/.auth-fetch-mcp/browser-data/	After first login	Yes — reused across restarts
Downloaded media files	~/.auth-fetch-mcp/downloads/<timestamp>/	Only when download_media is called	Yes — stays until you delete it
Captured page content (HTML)	Not saved to disk	Passed directly to AI via stdio	No — exists only in the AI's context

To clear all data:

# Clear login sessions only
rm -rf ~/.auth-fetch-mcp/browser-data/

# Clear downloaded files only
rm -rf ~/.auth-fetch-mcp/downloads/

# Clear everything
rm -rf ~/.auth-fetch-mcp/

Supported AI Tools

• Claude Code
• Cursor
• Windsurf
• Any MCP-compatible client using stdio transport

Limitations

• Requires a local environment (does not work in web-based chat interfaces)
• First access to each service requires manual login
• Very long pages are truncated to fit LLM context windows (100K chars)
• Some sites with aggressive bot detection may not work (try the wait_for option)
• Private, loopback, and link-local hosts are blocked by default — opt in via AUTH_FETCH_ALLOW_PRIVATE / AUTH_FETCH_ALLOW_HOSTS (see URL restrictions)

Privacy

• All data stays on your machine — nothing is sent to external servers
• Captured HTML is never written to disk — it only passes through the stdio pipe to the AI tool
• Browser sessions are stored locally as a standard Chromium profile
• Downloaded files go to a local directory you control

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request.

git clone https://github.com/ymw0407/auth-fetch-mcp.git
cd auth-fetch-mcp
npm install
npm run build

License

MIT