ResearchMCP

What is ResearchMCP?

ResearchMCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) service that provides internet research capabilities by integrating with Perplexity AI’s API. It exposes a single “research” tool for querying up-to-date information on a wide range of topics, with graceful error handling and degraded mode.

How to use ResearchMCP?

Set required environment variables (e.g., PERPLEXITY_API_KEY) in a .env file, then build and run the service using go build and ./ResearchMCP. The service exposes a tool named research that accepts a query string argument.

Key features of ResearchMCP

• Internet research through Perplexity AI
• Integration with MCP protocol for tool discovery and invocation
• Graceful error handling with degraded mode
• Configurable via environment variables
• Structured logging support

Use cases of ResearchMCP

• Asking complex, open‑ended questions that require up‑to‑date web knowledge
• Obtaining research reports with sourced information for analysis or content creation
• Integrating real‑time web search into any MCP‑compatible client or agent

FAQ from ResearchMCP

What dependencies or runtime are required?

Go 1.18 or later and a valid Perplexity AI API key are needed to build and run ResearchMCP.

How do I configure the service?

Configuration is done through environment variables: PERPLEXITY_API_KEY (required), and optional ones like PERPLEXITY_MODEL, PERPLEXITY_TIMEOUT, PERPLEXITY_MAX_RETRIES, PERPLEXITY_INITIAL_BACKOFF, and PERPLEXITY_MAX_BACKOFF.

What input does the research tool accept?

The tool requires a single query string (the research question or topic). It returns a text response that includes source URLs.

How are API errors handled?

The service includes graceful error handling with a degraded mode, configurable retries (default 2), and exponential backoff.

Is there authentication support?

ResearchMCP uses a Perplexity API key supplied via the PERPLEXITY_API_KEY environment variable. No other authentication or transport layer is described.