Local Search Fallback
taxueseek/argo
Zero-cost fallback for the argo search skill, wrapping 29 local engines for web, news, academic, code and reference queries when paid API quota should be saved.
Deterministic deep research via RivalSearchMCP. An agent skill from damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.
Install Rival Search MCP
$ npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a claude-codeProject install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.
$ gh skill install damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP rival-search-mcp --agent claude-codeProject scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/rival-search-mcp .claude/skills/rival-search-mcp && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.
Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/
Install the "rival-search-mcp" agent skill from https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP/tree/main/skills/rival-search-mcp into .claude/skills/rival-search-mcp/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "rival-search-mcp", then confirm the skill loads.Claude Code copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$skill-installer install https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP/tree/main/skills/rival-search-mcpType this inside Codex. $skill-installer <name> installs a curated skill from openai/skills. The installer writes to $CODEX_HOME/skills (default ~/.codex/skills). Restart Codex if the skill does not show up.
$ npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a codexProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.
$ gh skill install damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP rival-search-mcp --agent codexProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/rival-search-mcp .agents/skills/rival-search-mcp && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.
Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/
Install the "rival-search-mcp" agent skill from https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP/tree/main/skills/rival-search-mcp into .agents/skills/rival-search-mcp/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "rival-search-mcp", then confirm the skill loads.Codex copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a cursorProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.
$ gh skill install damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP rival-search-mcp --agent cursorProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/rival-search-mcp .cursor/skills/rival-search-mcp && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.
Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/
Install the "rival-search-mcp" agent skill from https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP/tree/main/skills/rival-search-mcp into .cursor/skills/rival-search-mcp/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "rival-search-mcp", then confirm the skill loads.Cursor copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gemini skills install https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.git --path skills/rival-search-mcp--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.
$ npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a gemini-cliProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.
$ gh skill install damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP rival-search-mcp --agent gemini-cliProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/rival-search-mcp .gemini/skills/rival-search-mcp && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.gemini/skills/ instead of .gemini/skills for a personal install, then run /skills reload.
Gemini CLI skills documentation · loads skills from .gemini/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "rival-search-mcp" agent skill from https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP/tree/main/skills/rival-search-mcp into .gemini/skills/rival-search-mcp/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "rival-search-mcp", then confirm the skill loads.Gemini CLI copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ gh skill install damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP rival-search-mcpInstalls for Copilot at project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Preview a skill first with gh skill preview. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).
$ npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a github-copilotProject install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/rival-search-mcp .github/skills/rival-search-mcp && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.copilot/skills/ instead of .github/skills for a personal install. Commit .github/skills so cloud agent and code review can use it.
GitHub Copilot skills documentation · loads skills from .github/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "rival-search-mcp" agent skill from https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP/tree/main/skills/rival-search-mcp into .github/skills/rival-search-mcp/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "rival-search-mcp", then confirm the skill loads.GitHub Copilot copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
$ npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a opencodeOpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.
$ gh skill install damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP rival-search-mcp --agent opencodeProject scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/rival-search-mcp .opencode/skills/rival-search-mcp && rm -rf skills-srcUse ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.
OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/
Install the "rival-search-mcp" agent skill from https://github.com/damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP/tree/main/skills/rival-search-mcp into .opencode/skills/rival-search-mcp/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "rival-search-mcp", then confirm the skill loads.OpenCode copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.
Facts
- Skill name
rival-search-mcp- GitHub stars
- 132
- Token cost
- ~796 tokens
- SKILL.md length
- 295 words
- Files
- 5 (incl. scripts)
- Skills in repo
- 1
- Repo updated
- First seen
- Licence
- MIT
At a glance
Deterministic deep research via RivalSearchMCP. An agent skill from damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.
- The user needs web research
- SKILL.md covers How to invoke tools, Available tools, When to chain tools and Tool reference, plus 1 more section
- Runs Python scripts from its folder; calls uv
- Competitive analysis
What it does
Rival Search MCP is an agent skill from damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP. Deterministic deep research via RivalSearchMCP. 9 tools: 5-engine web search (DuckDuckGo/Bing/Yahoo/Mojeek/Wikipedia), 9-platform social search (Reddit/HN/StackOverflow/Dev.to/Medium/ProductHunt/Bluesky/Lobste.rs/Lemmy), 5-source news (Google/Bing/Guardian/GDELT/DDG), 5 academic DBs (OpenAlex/CrossRef/arXiv/PubMed/EuropePMC), GitHub search, website mapping, content extraction with OCR, and research topic synthesis. No API keys required. Use when the user needs web research, competitive analysis, content…
Its SKILL.md is about 800 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 6 other files, including scripts (for example `resources/content.md`, `resources/research.md` and `resources/search.md`).
It sits in Research & Science, covering Academic paper search, Deep research and Competitor analysis. It works with Model Context Protocol, GitHub, arXiv and PubMed. The repository describes itself as: Deterministic research MCP server on FastMCP 3 — 5-engine web search, 9-platform social search, 6 academic DBs, news aggregation, entity profiles, conflict detection, document… The licence is MIT.
When your agent uses it
- The user needs web research
- Competitive analysis
- Content discovery
- Academic paper search
Example prompts
- “/rival-search-mcp”
Requirements
- Python 3
What it can do on your machine
Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 3540fa5. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.
Tool permissions
Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.
From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.
Runs code
Ships 1 file in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.
Shell commands in SKILL.md call:
uv
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Network
No URLs in SKILL.md. Its commands use uv, which can reach the network depending on how they are called.
From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.
Credentials
Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.
From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.
Context cost
Rival Search MCP loads about 796 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 141 tokens; SKILL.md has 295 words of instructions outside code blocks.
Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.
Safety
Auto-check passed
The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.
Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.
SKILL.md
The full file from damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP at commit 3540fa5, republished under its MIT licence (© damionrashford). 295 words, ~796 tokens.
Download SKILL.mdSave it as
.claude/skills/rival-search-mcp/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 4 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.- name
- rival-search-mcp
- description
- Deterministic deep research via RivalSearchMCP. 9 tools: 5-engine web search (DuckDuckGo/Bing/Yahoo/Mojeek/Wikipedia), 9-platform social search (Reddit/HN/StackOverflow/Dev.to/Medium/ProductHunt/Bluesky/Lobste.rs/Lemmy), 5-source news (Google/Bing/Guardian/GDELT/DDG), 5 academic DBs (OpenAlex/CrossRef/arXiv/PubMed/EuropePMC), GitHub search, website mapping, content extraction with OCR, and research topic synthesis. No API keys required. Use when the user needs web research, competitive analysis, content discovery, or academic paper search.
RivalSearchMCP
You have access to 9 research tools via the CLI at scripts/cli.py. Run all commands with uv run scripts/cli.py.
Every tool returns deterministic, auditable output. There is no in-server LLM — you're the one doing the synthesis.
How to invoke tools
uv run scripts/cli.py call-tool <tool_name> --flag valueAvailable tools
web_search— concurrent search across DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo, Mojeek, Wikipedia. Use for general web queries.social_search— Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Medium, Product Hunt, Bluesky, Lobste.rs, Lemmy. Use for community discussions.news_aggregation— Google News, Bing News, The Guardian, GDELT, DuckDuckGo News. Use for current events. Accepts--time-range day|week|month|anytime.github_search— search public GitHub repos. Use for code, libraries, projects.map_website— crawl a site inresearch/docs/mapmode. Use to explore site structure or documentation.content_operations— one tool, six ops (retrieve,stream,analyze,extract,score,find_conflicts). Use to get full page content, rate source quality, or surface disagreements between sources.document_analysis— extract text from PDFs, Word docs, images (image OCR via EasyOCR). Use for document processing.research_topic— end-to-end research workflow for a topic, combining search, content retrieval, and analysis.scientific_research— OpenAlex, CrossRef, arXiv, PubMed, Europe PMC (papers) + Kaggle, HuggingFace, Dataverse, Zenodo (datasets).
When to chain tools
- Found a URL from search? →
content_operations --operation retrieve --url <url> - Want to assess source trust before using results? →
content_operations --operation score --urls '[…]' - Two sources seem to disagree? →
content_operations --operation find_conflicts --urls '[…]' - Found a PDF link? →
document_analysis --url <url> - Need to explore a website? →
map_website --url <url> --mode docs - Need a unified entity profile in one shot? →
research_topic --mode entity --topic "OpenAI"
Tool reference
For full flags, types, and defaults for each tool, read:
- resources/search.md — web_search, social_search, news_aggregation, github_search, map_website
- resources/content.md — content_operations, document_analysis
- resources/research.md — research_topic, scientific_research
Output
All tools return structured text to stdout. Errors go to stderr. Exit codes: 0 success, 1 tool error, 2 connection failed.
© damionrashford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file
Files
SKILL.md and 4 other files (scripts) in skills/rival-search-mcp of damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP.
- SKILL.md
- resources/content.md
- resources/research.md
- resources/search.md
- scripts/cli.py
Open the folder on GitHubat commit 3540fa5
Compare with similar skills
Rival Search MCP next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.
| Skill | Stars | Used in | Tokens | Auto-check | Licence | Repo updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rival Search MCP this skilldamionrashford/RivalSearchMCP | 132 | — | ~796 | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Local Search Fallbacktaxueseek/argo | 188 | — | ~949 | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Paper Searchopenags/paper-search-mcp | 2.8k | — | ~1.2k | Automated safety check: Notes | MIT | |
| Nature Academic Searchwp-a/nature-academic-search | 304 | — | ~1.4k | Automated safety check: Pass | MIT | |
| Paper Searchopenags/paper-search-mcp | 2.8k | — | ~794 | Automated safety check: Notes | MIT | |
| Academic Search and Citation RouterYuan1z0825/nature-skills | 47k | — | ~884 | Automated safety check: Pass | Apache-2.0 |
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Academic Search and Citation Router
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Finds papers across literature sources, verifies and converts citations, builds MeSH strategies and audits independent citations of a paper.
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Related
Categories
Questions about Rival Search MCP
What does Rival Search MCP do?
Deterministic deep research via RivalSearchMCP. An agent skill from damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP. Rival Search MCP is an agent skill from damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP. Deterministic deep research via RivalSearchMCP.
When should I use Rival Search MCP?
Rival Search MCP fits situations like: the user needs web research; competitive analysis; content discovery; academic paper search.
How do I install Rival Search MCP in Claude Code?
Run `npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/rival-search-mcp in damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP) into .claude/skills/rival-search-mcp in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.
How do I install Rival Search MCP in Codex?
Run `npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/rival-search-mcp in damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP) into .agents/skills/rival-search-mcp in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.
Can I use Rival Search MCP in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?
Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP --skill rival-search-mcp -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/rival-search-mcp, .gemini/skills/rival-search-mcp, .github/skills/rival-search-mcp and .opencode/skills/rival-search-mcp in your project.
What does Rival Search MCP need to run?
Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Rival Search MCP needs Python for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (uv). Our summary lists: Python 3.
Does Rival Search MCP access the network?
SKILL.md contains no URLs. Its commands use uv, which can reach the network depending on how they are called. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.
Is Rival Search MCP safe to install?
Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.
What licence does Rival Search MCP use?
Rival Search MCP is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.
How many tokens does Rival Search MCP use?
About 796 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.2k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.
What are the alternatives to Rival Search MCP?
Skills that share tags, products or a category with Rival Search MCP: Local Search Fallback (taxueseek/argo, 188 stars), Paper Search (openags/paper-search-mcp, 2.8k stars), Nature Academic Search (wp-a/nature-academic-search, 304 stars) and Paper Search (openags/paper-search-mcp, 2.8k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.
Who maintains Rival Search MCP?
damionrashford (a GitHub user) maintains it in damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP, which has 132 GitHub stars. The repository was last updated on October 10, 2026.
Source: damionrashford/RivalSearchMCP on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.