A guide to building an MCP server, a service that lets AI assistants use external search tools. It covers local desktop clients and hosted cloud clients, including authentication and deployment.

Use it when implementing, authenticating, or deploying an Airweave search server for clients such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, or OpenAI Agent Builder.

It gives developers a clear structure for connecting search to different AI clients without guessing how communication or sign-in should work.

mcp-server — Cursor rule for Cursor by airweave-ai/airweave

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/airweave-ai/airweave

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/airweave-ai/airweave/mcp-server/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/airweave-ai/airweave/mcp-server)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/airweave-ai/airweave/mcp-server"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/airweave-ai/airweave/mcp-server/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/airweave-ai/airweave/mcp-server"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/airweave-ai/airweave/mcp-server.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.

When invoked 2,027 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00000	$0.02027
Opus 5.5	$0.00000	$0.00811
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00000	$0.00405
Haiku 4.5	$0.00000	$0.00203

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 35196c6056e7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

mcp-server scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/mcp-server.mdc · 176 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 176 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Airweave MCP Server Architecture

Overview

The Airweave MCP Server provides search capabilities for AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It supports both local desktop clients and cloud-based AI platforms, with API key and OAuth 2.0 authentication.

Deployment Modes

1. Local Mode (Desktop AI Clients)

Transport: stdio (standard input/output)
Target: Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code
Entry Point: src/index.ts
Installation: npx airweave-mcp-search
Architecture: Single-tenant, one server instance per user
Authentication: API key from environment variables

2. Hosted Mode (Cloud AI Platforms)

Transport: Streamable HTTP (MCP 2025-03-26)
Target: OpenAI Agent Builder, Cursor (remote), any HTTP MCP client
Entry Point: src/index-http.ts
Deployment: Azure Kubernetes Service
URL: https://mcp.airweave.ai/mcp
Architecture: Fully stateless — a fresh McpServer + transport is created per request
Authentication: API key (via headers) or OAuth 2.0 (via Auth0)

Architecture Components

Core Server (`src/server.ts`)

McpServer: MCP server factory — createMcpServer(config) returns an isolated instance
Tool Registration: Dynamic tool creation based on collection (search-{collection}, get-config)
Airweave Client: API client for search operations (src/api/airweave-client.ts)

Streamable HTTP Server (`src/index-http.ts`)

Express App: HTTP server with health checks and info endpoints
Streamable HTTP Transport: MCP 2025-03-26 transport, stateless (no sessions)
Request Handling: POST /mcp — creates fresh McpServer per request
Dual Auth: resolveAuth middleware resolves API key vs OAuth per request
OAuth Router: mcpAuthRouter from MCP SDK handles OAuth protocol endpoints when enabled

Authentication (`src/auth/`)

`resolveAuth` middleware (in `index-http.ts`)

Priority-based auth resolution per request:

X-API-Key header present → API key auth, no JWT check
Authorization: Bearer <token> with OAuth enabled → attempt JWT verification via Auth0OAuthProvider.verifyAccessToken; if valid → OAuth path (req.auth set); if invalid → fallback to API key
No credential → 401

Read the full file on GitHub · 176 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

1mo ago First seen · 176 lines · 2,027 tokens per session scan A 35196c6056e7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mcp-server is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository airweave-ai/airweave (6,556 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 2,027 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Backend and APIs Building agents LLM agent-infrastructure ai ai-agents search

mcp-server

Getting it into your agent

Wrote this? Show the measurements

What it costs to keep this loaded

Grade A, and why

Nothing flagged

How it starts

Airweave MCP Server Architecture

Overview

Deployment Modes

1. Local Mode (Desktop AI Clients)

2. Hosted Mode (Cloud AI Platforms)

Architecture Components

Core Server (`src/server.ts`)

Streamable HTTP Server (`src/index-http.ts`)

Authentication (`src/auth/`)

`resolveAuth` middleware (in `index-http.ts`)

What this file has done since we first saw it

Other cursor rules, from other repositories

gateway

provider-devin

backend-rules

ddd-design-guide

backend-python

pn-rust-backend

mcp-server

Getting it into your agent

Wrote this? Show the measurements

What it costs to keep this loaded

Grade A, and why

Nothing flagged

How it starts

Airweave MCP Server Architecture

Overview

Deployment Modes

1. Local Mode (Desktop AI Clients)

2. Hosted Mode (Cloud AI Platforms)

Architecture Components

Core Server (src/server.ts)

Streamable HTTP Server (src/index-http.ts)

Authentication (src/auth/)

resolveAuth middleware (in index-http.ts)

What this file has done since we first saw it

Other cursor rules, from other repositories

gateway

provider-devin

backend-rules

ddd-design-guide

backend-python

pn-rust-backend

Core Server (`src/server.ts`)

Streamable HTTP Server (`src/index-http.ts`)

Authentication (`src/auth/`)

`resolveAuth` middleware (in `index-http.ts`)