search-webdeveloper-tools

Package Documentation Fetcher

cdugo

by cdugo

Get up-to-date library info with Package Documentation Fetcher – a great tool for those with an MLIS degree or a master'

Integrates with multiple package registries and documentation sources to provide up-to-date library information for code assistance, dependency analysis, and learning about new libraries.

github stars

15

0 commentsdiscussion

Both formats append explainx.ai attribution and the canonical URL for this MCP server listing.

No API key requiredWorks with Claude Desktop and Cursor IDE9+ language ecosystems supported

best for

  • / Developers researching new libraries and dependencies
  • / Code assistance and learning about unfamiliar packages
  • / Dependency analysis and documentation review

capabilities

  • / Fetch package documentation by name or URL
  • / Extract README files and API documentation
  • / Crawl documentation sites for comprehensive info
  • / Retrieve repository metadata and code examples
  • / Support 9+ programming languages and registries

what it does

Fetches documentation and package information from multiple language registries (npm, PyPI, Maven, etc.) without requiring API keys. Extracts READMEs, API docs, and code examples for LLM analysis.

about

Package Documentation Fetcher is a community-built MCP server published by cdugo that provides AI assistants with tools and capabilities via the Model Context Protocol. Get up-to-date library info with Package Documentation Fetcher – a great tool for those with an MLIS degree or a master' It is categorized under search web, developer tools.

how to install

You can install Package Documentation Fetcher in your AI client of choice. Use the install panel on this page to get one-click setup for Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible clients. This server runs locally on your machine via the stdio transport.

license

MIT

Package Documentation Fetcher is released under the MIT license. This is a permissive open-source license, meaning you can freely use, modify, and distribute the software.

readme

📚 DocsFetcher MCP Server

smithery badge npm version npm downloads

An MCP server that fetches package documentation from multiple language ecosystems for LLMs like Claude without requiring API keys.

<a href="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/8yfwtryuc5"> <img width="380" height="200" src="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/8yfwtryuc5/badge" alt="DocsFetcher Server MCP server" /> </a>

✨ Features

  • 🌐 Supports multiple programming languages (JavaScript, Python, Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, Rust, Go, Swift)
  • 📦 Fetches documentation for packages by name or URL
  • 🔍 Crawls documentation sites to extract comprehensive information
  • 📄 Extracts README, API docs, code examples, and repository info
  • 🧠 Provides structured data for LLM summarization
  • 💬 Includes specialized prompts for documentation analysis
  • 🔑 No API key required - works natively with Claude Desktop and Cursor IDE

🚀 Installation

Claude Desktop

  1. Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Developer
  2. Click "Edit Config" and add:
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docsFetcher": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@smithery/cli@latest",
        "run",
        "@cdugo/mcp-get-docs",
        "--config",
        "'{}'"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Cursor IDE Configuration

  1. Open Cursor IDE → Settings → MCP -> Add New MCP Servier
  2. Add:
    Name: docsFetcher
    Command: npx -y @smithery/cli@latest run @cdugo/mcp-get-docs --config "{}"

Prerequisites

  • 📋 Node.js 18 or later

🏃‍♂️ Running Locally

git clone https://github.com/cdugo/package-documentation-mcp
cd package-documentation-mcp
npm install
npm run build

Once installed, you can run the server locally with:

# From the project root directory
npm start

For development with auto-restart on file changes:

npm run dev

The server will start on the default port (usually 3000). You should see output like:

🚀 DocsFetcher MCP Server running!
📋 Ready to fetch documentation

To specify a custom port:

PORT=8080 npm start

🛠️ Available Tools

  1. fetch-url-docs: 🔗 Fetch docs from a specific URL
  2. fetch-package-docs: 📦 Fetch docs for a package with optional language specification
  3. fetch-library-docs: 🧠 Smart tool that works with either package name or URL
  4. fetch-multilingual-docs: 🌍 Fetch docs for a package across multiple language ecosystems

📝 Available Prompts

  1. summarize-library-docs: 📚 Create a comprehensive library summary
  2. explain-dependency-error: 🐛 Generate dependency error explanations

💡 Example Queries

Basic Library Information

  • "What is Express.js and how do I use it?"
  • "Tell me about the React library"
  • "How do I use requests in Python?"

Multi-language Support

  • "Show me documentation for lodash in JavaScript"
  • "Compare pandas in Python and data.table in R"

Using Tools

  • "@fetch-package-docs with packageName='express' and language='javascript'"
  • "@fetch-package-docs with packageName='requests' and language='python'"
  • "@fetch-multilingual-docs with packageName='http' and languages=['javascript', 'python', 'rust']"

Using Prompts

  • "@summarize-library-docs with libraryName='express'"
  • "@explain-dependency-error with packageName='dotenv'"

❓ Troubleshooting

Local Installation

  • Server not showing up: ✅ Verify absolute path in configuration
  • Connection errors: 🔄 Restart Claude Desktop or Cursor IDE
  • Fetch failures: ⚠️ Some packages may have non-standard documentation
  • Language support: 🌐 If a language isn't working, try using the package's direct URL

📄 License

MIT

FAQ

What is the Package Documentation Fetcher MCP server?
Package Documentation Fetcher is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server profile on explainx.ai. MCP lets AI hosts (e.g. Claude Desktop, Cursor) call tools and resources through a standard interface; this page summarizes categories, install hints, and community ratings.
How do MCP servers relate to agent skills?
Skills are reusable instruction packages (often SKILL.md); MCP servers expose live capabilities. Teams frequently combine both—skills for workflows, MCP for APIs and data. See explainx.ai/skills and explainx.ai/mcp-servers for parallel directories.
How are reviews shown for Package Documentation Fetcher?
This profile displays 26 aggregated ratings (sample rows for discoverability plus signed-in user reviews). Average score is about 4.5 out of 5—verify behavior in your own environment before production use.

Use Cases

Web Research & Information Gathering

Fetch and extract information from websites automatically

Example

Research competitor pricing, scrape product reviews, monitor news mentions

Automate 5-10 hours/week of manual web research

Content Monitoring & Alerts

Track website changes, new content, price updates

Example

Monitor competitor blog for new posts, track stock availability, watch for pricing changes

Stay informed without manual checking, never miss important updates

Data Extraction & Aggregation

Extract structured data from multiple websites

Example

Compile product listings from 10 e-commerce sites, aggregate job postings, collect real estate data

Build datasets 100x faster than manual copying

API-less Integration

Interact with services that don't offer APIs

Example

Check form submissions, validate website functionality, test user flows

Automate interactions with any website, even without API

Implementation Guide

Prerequisites

  • Claude Desktop or Cursor with MCP support
  • Understanding of web scraping ethics and robots.txt
  • Rate limiting awareness to avoid overwhelming target sites
  • Knowledge of legal restrictions on data collection

Time Estimate

20-40 minutes including configuration and testing

Installation Steps

  1. 1.Install web automation MCP server via npm or pip
  2. 2.Configure allowed domains and rate limits in MCP config
  3. 3.Test with simple fetch: 'Get content from example.com'
  4. 4.Progress to extraction: 'Extract all product prices from this page'
  5. 5.Set up monitoring: 'Check this URL daily for changes'
  6. 6.Parse structured data: 'Create CSV from this table'
  7. 7.Respect robots.txt and rate limits always

Troubleshooting

  • 403 Forbidden: Website blocks bots—respect their wishes, use official API instead
  • Rate limit errors: Slow down requests, add delays between fetches
  • Stale data: Target site changed HTML structure—update selectors
  • Timeout errors: Site is slow or blocking—increase timeout, try different user agent
  • JavaScript-rendered content: Use headless browser MCP servers for dynamic sites

Best Practices

✓ Do

  • +Check robots.txt and respect crawl rules
  • +Rate limit requests: 1-2 requests/second maximum
  • +Use official APIs when available instead of scraping
  • +Identify your bot with descriptive user agent
  • +Cache results to minimize repeated requests
  • +Handle errors gracefully with retries and fallbacks
  • +Validate extracted data for accuracy

✗ Don't

  • Don't scrape sites that explicitly forbid it (robots.txt, ToS)
  • Don't overwhelm servers with rapid requests—use rate limiting
  • Don't scrape personal data without consent and legal basis
  • Don't ignore copyright on extracted content
  • Don't assume HTML structure is stable—handle changes
  • Don't use scraped data for commercial purposes without permission

💡 Pro Tips

  • Use CSS selectors or XPath for robust data extraction
  • Set up monitoring alerts for extraction failures (structure changed)
  • Implement exponential backoff for retries on failures
  • Store raw HTML for reprocessing if extraction logic changes
  • Combine with data analysis tools for insights from extracted data
  • Consider using official APIs or RSS feeds as more stable alternatives

Technical Details

Architecture

MCP server handles HTTP requests, HTML parsing, JavaScript rendering (if headless browser), and returns structured data to Claude.

Protocols

  • HTTP/HTTPS
  • WebSocket (for real-time sites)
  • Puppeteer/Playwright (for JavaScript sites)

Compatibility

  • Static HTML sites
  • JavaScript-rendered SPAs (with headless browser)
  • REST APIs
  • GraphQL endpoints

When to Use This

✓ Use When

Use for research automation, content monitoring, data aggregation from multiple sources, and when official APIs don't exist. Best for read-only information gathering.

✗ Avoid When

Avoid for sites with APIs (use API instead), sites that explicitly forbid scraping, when data is copyrighted, or for login-required content without proper authorization.

Integration

  • Scheduled monitoring with change detection
  • Multi-source data aggregation pipelines
  • Fallback to web scraping when API rate limits hit
  • Headless browser for JavaScript-heavy sites

Discussion

Product Hunt–style comments (not star reviews)
  • No comments yet — start the thread.

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Ratings

4.526 reviews
  • Chaitanya Patil· Dec 24, 2024

    Package Documentation Fetcher is among the better-indexed MCP projects we tried; the explainx.ai summary tracks the official description.

  • Aditi Smith· Dec 20, 2024

    Package Documentation Fetcher reduced integration guesswork — categories and install configs on the listing matched the upstream repo.

  • Nikhil Jackson· Dec 16, 2024

    We evaluated Package Documentation Fetcher against two servers with overlapping tools; this profile had the clearer scope statement.

  • Liam Flores· Dec 12, 2024

    Package Documentation Fetcher has been reliable for tool-calling workflows; the MCP profile page is a good permalink for internal docs.

  • Piyush G· Nov 15, 2024

    Package Documentation Fetcher is a well-scoped MCP server in the explainx.ai directory — install snippets and categories matched our Claude Code setup.

  • Harper Reddy· Nov 7, 2024

    Useful MCP listing: Package Documentation Fetcher is the kind of server we cite when onboarding engineers to host + tool permissions.

  • Luis Thomas· Nov 3, 2024

    According to our notes, Package Documentation Fetcher benefits from clear Model Context Protocol framing — fewer ambiguous “AI plugin” claims.

  • Daniel Diallo· Oct 26, 2024

    Strong directory entry: Package Documentation Fetcher surfaces stars and publisher context so we could sanity-check maintenance before adopting.

  • Aarav Martin· Oct 22, 2024

    Package Documentation Fetcher is among the better-indexed MCP projects we tried; the explainx.ai summary tracks the official description.

  • Shikha Mishra· Oct 6, 2024

    Package Documentation Fetcher has been reliable for tool-calling workflows; the MCP profile page is a good permalink for internal docs.

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