Needle

by needle-ai

37 stars
441 downloads
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About

Bridges Needle AI platform with MCP servers to enable advanced natural language processing and machine learning capabilities.

Details

Author
needle-ai
Repository
needle-ai/needle-mcp
GitHub stars
37
Downloads
441
License
MIT License
Categories
Developer Tools, Search, Knowledge Base, Other, AI, Community, Design, Communication, Infrastructure, API

Jump to

- Document Management: Easily add and organize documents on the server.
- Search & Retrieval: Claude-based natural language search for quick answers.
- Easy Integration: Works with Claude Desktop and Needle collections.

---

Setting up with Highlight

This MCP is not yet compatible with Highlight’s one-click setup. However, you can still use it with Highlight by following these steps:

  1. Download and install Highlight from highlightai.com/download
  2. Navigate to the plugins tab and select "Add Custom Plugin"
  3. Configure the plugin with the settings below
    Plugin Name Needle
    Command (node, npx, python, etc.) npx
    Arguments
    • Argument 1 mcp-remote
    • Argument 2 https://mcp.needle.app/mcp
    • Argument 3 --header
    • Argument 4 Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}
    Environment
    • NEEDLE_API_KEY <your-needle-api-key>

    Please refer to the README for specific instructions on how to obtain API keys or other required environment variables.

  4. Enable "Start Automatically" if you want the plugin to start when Highlight launches

From the repository

Install via the recommended remote server (add to Claude Desktop or Cursor config with your Needle API key) or locally using UV or Docker. After setup, connect in Claude Desktop and use simple text commands like “Create a new collection called ‘Technical Docs’”, “Add this document to the collection”, “Search the collection for information about AI”, or “List all my collections”.

Claude Desktop / Cursor

Paste into your MCP client config file to install this server.

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "needle": {
            "env": {
                "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>"
            },
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp",
                "--header",
                "Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}"
            ],
            "command": "npx"
        }
    }
}

Linux

{
    "env": {
        "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>"
    },
    "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}"
    ],
    "command": "npx"
}

Macos

{
    "env": {
        "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>"
    },
    "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}"
    ],
    "command": "npx"
}

Windows

{
    "env": {
        "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>"
    },
    "args": [
        "/c",
        "npx",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}"
    ],
    "command": "cmd"
}

- Create a new collection— Ask Claude to create a document collection in Needle, e.g. “Create a new collection called ‘Technical Docs’”.
- Add documents to a collection— Provide a URL or file and have Claude add it to a specified Needle collection.
- Search across your documents— Use natural language to search a collection for specific information buried in PDFs, DOCX, or XLSX files.
- List all collections— Ask Claude to retrieve a list of your existing Needle collections.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server to manage documents and perform searches usingNeedlethrough Claude's Desktop Application.

- Overview
- Features
- Usage

- Commands in Claude Desktop
- Result in Needle

- Organize and store documents for quick retrieval.
- Perform powerful searches via Claude's large language model.
- Integrate seamlessly with the Needle ecosystem for advanced document management.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) standardizes the way LLMs connect to external data sources. You can use Needle MCP Server to easily enable semantic search tools in your AI applications, making data buried in PDFs, DOCX, XLSX, and other files instantly accessible by LLMs.

We recommend using our remote MCP serverfor the best experience - no local setup required.

- Document Management:Easily add and organize documents on the server.
- Search & Retrieval:Claude-based natural language search for quick answers.
- Easy Integration:Works withClaude Desktopand Needle collections.

Below is an example of how the commands can be used in Claude Desktop to interact with the server:
- Open Claude Desktopand connect to the Needle MCP Server.
- Use simple text commandsto search, retrieve, or modify documents.
- Review search resultsreturned by Claude in a user-friendly interface.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0235e893-af96-4920-8364-1e86f73b3e6c

For a full walkthrough on using the Needle MCP Server with Claude and Claude Desktop, watch thisYouTube explanation video.

- For MacOS:~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
- For Windows:%APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{ "mcpServers": { "needle": { "command": "npx", "args": [ "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp", "--header", "Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}" ], "env": { "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>" } } } }

{ "mcpServers": { "needle": { "command": "npx", "args": [ "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp", "--header", "Authorization:${NEEDLE_AUTH_HEADER}" ], "env": { "NEEDLE_AUTH_HEADER": "Bearer <your-needle-api-key>" } } } }

- Streamable HTTP:https://mcp.needle.app/mcp(recommended)
- SSE:https://mcp.needle.app/sse

Note: MCP deprecated SSE endpoints in the latest specification, so newer clients should prefer the Streamable HTTP endpoint.

git clone https://github.com/needle-ai/needle-mcp.git

- Create your config file:

- For MacOS:~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
- For Windows:%APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{ "mcpServers": { "needle": { "command": "uv", "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/needle-mcp", "run", "needle-mcp"], "env": { "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>" } } } }

{ "mcpServers": { "needle": { "command": "uv", "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/needle-mcp", "run", "needle-mcp"], "env": { "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>" } } } }

- Replace/path/to/needle-mcpwith your actual repository path
- Add your Needle API key
- Restart Claude Desktop

npx -y @smithery/cli install needle-mcp --client claude

git clone https://github.com/needle-ai/needle-mcp.git cd needle-mcp docker build -t needle-mcp .

- Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{ "mcpServers": { "needle": { "command": "docker", "args": ["run", "--rm", "-i", "needle-mcp"], "env": { "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>" } } } }

- "Create a new collection called 'Technical Docs'"
- "Add this document to the collection, which ishttps://needle.app"
- "Search the collection for information about AI"
- "List all my collections"

- Make sureuvis installed globally (if not, uninstall withpip uninstall uvand reinstall withbrew install uv)
- Or finduvpath withwhich uvand replace"command": "uv"with the full path
- Verify your Needle API key is correct
- Check if the needle-mcp path in config matches your actual repository location

If you're seeing old configurations or the integration isn't working:

find / -name "claude_desktop_config.json" 2>/dev/null

- On MacOS:rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/*
- On Windows: Delete contents of%APPDATA%/Claude/

mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude cat > ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json << 'EOL' { "mcpServers": { "needle": { "command": "uv", "args": [ "--directory", "/path/to/needle-mcp", "run", "needle-mcp" ], "env": { "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "your_needle_api_key" } } } } EOL

-

Completely quit Claude Desktop (Command+Q on Mac) and relaunch it

- Check for additional config files in other locations
- Try clearing browser cache if using web version
- Verify the config file is being read from the correct location

Search global news using natural language. Webz.io News Search API returns the most relevant articles and content, with filters for source, country, language, date, sentiment, and category.

RAG Search over your content powered by Inkeep

Vectorize MCP server for advanced retrieval, Private Deep Research, Anything-to-Markdown file extraction and text chunking.

Codicil indexes a repo's Markdown/YAML/TOML docs into a local Chroma store and exposes query_docs/reindex_docs over MCP. Uses Ollama embeddings when available; with zero infra beyond that, it degrades to live keyword search off disk instead of failing.

A self-hosted MCP server that indexes documentation from various sources and serves it to AI Agents with semantic search.

Creates a personal, always-current knowledge base for AI by indexing documentation from websites, GitHub, npm, PyPI, and local files.

Local RAG system for Claude Code with hybrid search (semantic + BM25), cross-encoder reranking, markdown-aware chunking, 9 file formats, file watcher, and 12 MCP tools. Zero external servers. pip install knowledge-rag

A document question-and-answer server powered by Langflow.

A discovery and recommendation service for exploring MCP servers using natural language queries.

Explore and discover Model Context Protocol servers using natural language queries.

A server for document management and semantic search using AI embeddings, with local JSON storage.

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Install

Add to Claude Desktop or Cursor

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "needle": {
            "env": {
                "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>"
            },
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp",
                "--header",
                "Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}"
            ],
            "command": "npx"
        }
    }
}

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