Frequently Asked Questions about UBOS Brave Search MCP Server

Q: What is an MCP Server? A: MCP (Model Context Protocol) server acts as a bridge, allowing AI models to access and interact with external data sources and tools in standardized way. UBOS Brave Search MCP server allows to connect to Brave Search API.

Q: What is UBOS? A: UBOS is a Full-stack AI Agent Development Platform. Focused on bringing AI Agent to every business department. Our platform help you orchestrate AI Agents, connect them with your enterprise data, build custom AI Agents with your LLM model and Multi-Agent Systems.

Q: What is the Brave Search MCP server? A: It’s an implementation that integrates the Brave Search API with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), providing web and local search capabilities to AI agents.

Q: What are the main features of the Brave Search MCP server? A: The server offers web search (general queries, news, articles with pagination), local search (businesses, restaurants), flexible filtering (result types, safety levels), and smart fallbacks (local search to web search).

Q: How do I get a Brave Search API key? A: Sign up for a Brave Search API account at brave.com/search/api, choose a plan, and generate your key from the developer dashboard.

Q: How do I configure the Brave Search MCP server? A: You can configure it using Docker, NPX, or VS Code, as detailed in the documentation. You’ll need to provide your Brave Search API key.

Q: What is the purpose of local search? A: It allows AI agents to find local businesses, restaurants, and services with detailed information such as addresses and phone numbers.

Q: What does the smart fallback feature do? A: If a local search query returns no results, the server automatically falls back to web search to provide relevant information.

Q: What kind of filtering options are available? A: You can control result types (web pages, images, videos), safety levels (filtering inappropriate content), and content freshness (prioritizing recent or historical information).

Q: What license is the Brave Search MCP server released under? A: It’s licensed under the MIT License, allowing free use, modification, and distribution subject to the license terms.

Q: Can I use this with Claude Desktop or VS Code? A: Yes, configuration examples are provided for both Claude Desktop (via claude_desktop_config.json) and VS Code (via User Settings or .vscode/mcp.json).

Q: How do I install the Brave Search MCP server in VS Code? A: Use the one-click installation buttons for NPX or Docker, or manually add the provided JSON block to your User Settings (JSON) file.

Q: What if I don’t want to use the one-click install? A: You can manually add the JSON configuration to your VS Code settings file (settings.json). You also have the option to set up a .vscode/mcp.json within your project directory to share your configuration with your team.

Q: How do I build the Docker image myself? A: Run docker build -t mcp/brave-search:latest -f src/brave-search/Dockerfile . from the project directory.