webshift 0.2.2

Denoised web search library — fetch, clean, and rerank web content for AI agents.
Documentation
webshift-0.2.2 has been yanked.

WebShift

Crates.io License MCP Protocol Latest Release Alpha

What is WebShift

WebShift is a Rust library and MCP server that shifts noisy web pages into clean, right-sized text for LLM consumption.

Raw HTML is mostly junk: scripts, ads, navigation menus, cookie banners, tracking pixels. Feeding it directly to an LLM floods the context window with tens of thousands of useless tokens and leaves no room for reasoning. WebShift strips all that noise, sterilizes the text, and enforces strict size budgets so the model receives only the content that matters.

What you get

Depending on the features you enable, WebShift can be three things:

Use case Crate Feature flags What it does
HTML denoiser webshift default-features = false clean() — pure Rust HTML-to-text pipeline. Strips noise elements, sterilizes Unicode/BiDi, collapses whitespace. Zero network, zero config. Drop into any Rust project that processes web content for LLMs.
Web content client webshift default or features = ["llm"] fetch() + query() — streaming HTTP fetcher with size caps, 8 search backends, BM25 reranking, optional LLM query expansion and summarization. Full pipeline from search query to structured results.
MCP server webshift-mcp all features Native binary (mcp-webshift) that exposes webshift_query, webshift_fetch, and webshift_onboarding over MCP stdio. Single static binary, zero runtime dependencies.

When to use WebShift

  • You're building an AI agent that needs web search and you want clean, budget-controlled text — not raw HTML.
  • You're processing web pages in a Rust pipeline and need a reliable HTML-to-text cleaner that strips noise without losing real content.
  • You want an MCP web search server that works as a single binary — no Python, no pip, no venv, no Docker (unless you want it).
  • You need hard guarantees on output size: per-page caps, total budget caps, streaming download limits.

When NOT to use WebShift

  • You need a headless browser that renders JavaScript-heavy SPAs. WebShift parses static HTML — it doesn't execute JS.
  • You need to preserve the visual layout or formatting of a page (tables, CSS grids, positioning). WebShift extracts text, not structure.
  • You're building a web scraper that needs to navigate across pages, fill forms, or handle authentication flows.

How it works

Question
  |
  +- (optional) LLM query expansion -> multiple search variants
  |
  +- Search via backend (SearXNG, Brave, Tavily, Exa, SerpAPI, Google, Bing, HTTP)
  |
  +- Deduplicate + filter binary URLs
  |
  +- Streaming fetch with per-page size cap
  |
  +- HTML cleaning -> plain text (noise elements, scripts, nav removed)
  |
  +- Unicode/BiDi sterilization
  |
  +- BM25 deterministic reranking
  |   +- (optional) LLM-assisted tier-2 reranking
  |
  +- Budget-aware truncation across all sources
  |
  +- (optional) LLM Markdown summary with inline citations
  |
  +- Structured JSON output

For a detailed explanation of each pipeline stage, BM25 parameters, adaptive budget allocation, and real compression metrics see Under the Hood. For the full configuration reference (TOML, env vars, CLI args) see Configuration. For ready-to-use examples see Use Cases.

Installation

Binary (MCP server)

cargo install webshift-mcp

The binary is called mcp-webshift.

From source

cargo install --path crates/webshift-mcp

As a library

# Full pipeline (search + fetch + clean + rerank)

webshift = "0.2"



# Cleaner + fetcher only (no search backends)

webshift = { version = "0.2", default-features = false }



# Everything including LLM features

webshift = { version = "0.2", features = ["llm"] }

Quick start

1. Set up a search backend

The easiest option is SearXNG — free, self-hosted, no API key:

docker run -d -p 4000:8080 searxng/searxng

No Docker? Use a cloud backend — see Search backends.

2. Configure your MCP client

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "webshift": {
      "command": "mcp-webshift",
      "args": ["--default-backend", "searxng"]
    }
  }
}

That's it. The agent now has webshift_query, webshift_fetch, and webshift_onboarding.

For client-specific setup see docs/integrations/.

MCP tools

Tool Description
webshift_query Full search pipeline: search + fetch + clean + rerank + (optional) summarize
webshift_fetch Single page fetch and clean
webshift_onboarding Returns a JSON guide for the agent (budgets, backends, tips)

webshift_query parameters

Parameter Type Default Description
queries string or list required Search query or list of queries
num_results integer 5 Results per query
lang string none Language filter (e.g. "en")
backend string config default Override search backend

Configuration

Resolution order (highest priority first):

  1. CLI args — --default-backend, --brave-api-key, etc.
  2. Environment variables — WEBSHIFT_* prefix
  3. Config file — webshift.toml (current dir, then ~/webshift.toml)
  4. Built-in defaults

Config file

[server]

max_query_budget    = 32000   # total char budget across all sources

max_result_length   = 8000    # per-page char cap

max_total_results   = 20      # hard cap on results per call

max_download_mb     = 1       # streaming cap per page (MB)

search_timeout      = 8       # seconds

results_per_query   = 5

oversampling_factor = 2

adaptive_budget     = "auto"  # "auto" | "on" | "off" — budget allocation mode



[backends]

default = "searxng"



[backends.searxng]

url = "http://localhost:4000"



[backends.brave]

api_key = "BSA-..."



[backends.tavily]

api_key = "tvly-..."



[backends.exa]

api_key = "..."



[backends.serpapi]

api_key = "..."

engine  = "google"    # google | bing | duckduckgo | yandex



[backends.google]

api_key = "..."

cx      = "..."       # Custom Search Engine ID



[backends.bing]

api_key = "..."

market  = "en-US"



[backends.http]

url           = "https://my-search.example.com/api/search"

query_param   = "q"

count_param   = "limit"

results_path  = "data.items"     # dot-path to results array in JSON response

title_field   = "title"

url_field     = "link"

snippet_field = "description"



[backends.http.headers]

"Authorization" = "Bearer my-token"



[llm]

enabled               = false

base_url              = "http://localhost:11434/v1"   # OpenAI-compatible

api_key               = ""

model                 = "gemma3:27b"

timeout               = 60

expansion_enabled     = true

summarization_enabled = true

llm_rerank_enabled    = false

For every setting with all three config methods (TOML, env vars, CLI args) and plain-language descriptions, see the full Configuration Reference. Ready-to-use config examples are in Use Cases and examples/.

Key environment variables

WEBSHIFT_DEFAULT_BACKEND=searxng
WEBSHIFT_SEARXNG_URL=http://localhost:4000
WEBSHIFT_BRAVE_API_KEY=BSA-xxx
WEBSHIFT_GOOGLE_API_KEY=xxx
WEBSHIFT_GOOGLE_CX=xxx
WEBSHIFT_BING_API_KEY=xxx
WEBSHIFT_LLM_ENABLED=true
WEBSHIFT_LLM_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/v1
WEBSHIFT_LLM_MODEL=gemma3:27b

Search backends

Backend Auth Notes
SearXNG none Self-hosted, free. Default: http://localhost:4000
Brave API key Free tier. brave.com/search/api
Tavily API key AI-oriented. tavily.com
Exa API key Neural search. exa.ai
SerpAPI API key Multi-engine proxy (Google, Bing, DDG...). serpapi.com
Google API key + CX Custom Search. Free: 100 req/day. programmablesearchengine.google.com
Bing API key Web Search API. Free: 1,000 req/month. Microsoft Azure
HTTP configurable Generic REST backend — no code required, TOML-only config

LLM features (optional)

All opt-in — disabled by default, no data leaves your machine unless enabled.

Feature What it does
Query expansion Single query -> N complementary search variants
Summarization Markdown report with inline [1] [2] citations
LLM reranking Tier-2 reranking on top of deterministic BM25

Cross-language normalization (bonus): when BM25 reranking surfaces pages in foreign languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic), the LLM summarizer still produces the final report in the prompt language. The agent receives clean, readable output regardless of the language mix in the source pages.

Works with any OpenAI-compatible API (OpenAI, Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, etc.):

[llm]

enabled  = true

base_url = "http://localhost:11434/v1"

model    = "gemma3:27b"

Anti-flooding protections

Always active — the core value proposition:

Protection Description
max_download_mb Streaming cap — never buffers full response
max_result_length Hard cap on characters per cleaned page
max_query_budget Total character budget across all sources
max_total_results Hard cap on results per call
Binary filter .pdf, .zip, .exe, etc. filtered before any network request
Unicode sterilization BiDi control chars, zero-width chars removed

Library usage

use webshift::{Config, clean, fetch, query};

// Clean raw HTML
let result = clean("<html><body><p>Hello world</p></body></html>", 8000);

// Fetch and clean a single page
let config = Config::default();
let page = fetch("https://example.com", &config).await?;

// Full search pipeline
let results = query(&["rust async programming"], &config).await?;
for source in &results.sources {
    println!("[{}] {} — {} chars", source.id, source.title, source.content.len());
}

Feature flags

Feature Default Enables
backends on All search backends + query pipeline
llm off LLM client, expander, summarizer, LLM reranking

Integrations

Platform Guide
Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Zed, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code IDE Integration
Gemini CLI, Claude CLI, custom agents Agent Integration

Alpha Status

WebShift is in alpha. Core functionality is stable and the server is used daily, but the API surface may still change before 1.0.

Feedback is very welcome. If something doesn't work as expected, behaves oddly, or you have a use case that isn't covered:

Open an issue on GitHub

Bug reports, configuration questions, and feature requests all help shape the roadmap.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed guidelines on:

  • Development setup and workflow
  • Code style and conventions
  • Testing requirements
  • Documentation standards
  • Pull request process

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Links

Need help? Check the documentation or open an issue on GitHub.