Add You.com to Windsurf

Give Windsurf’s Cascade agent real-time web search, content extraction, and citation-backed research through the You.com MCP Server.

Quick setup

Open Windsurf MCP settings

In Windsurf, open Settings → Cascade → Model Context Protocol Servers, click Add Server, then paste:

1 {
2   "mcpServers": {
3     "you-com": {
4       "serverUrl": "https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free"
5     }
6   }
7 }

Windsurf gotcha: Windsurf uses serverUrl (not url) for remote MCP servers. Copy-pasting the JSON template from the MCP Server overview page won’t work without this rename.

This uses our free tier: 100 web searches per day, no signup.

Reload Cascade

Click the refresh icon in the MCP panel, or restart Windsurf. The you-com server should appear with a green status indicator.

Try it in Cascade

Open Cascade and prompt:

Search for the latest Astro 5 release notes and summarize the new features.

Cascade will request permission to use you-search on first call.

Higher rate limits + full toolset

For unlimited queries plus you-contents (page extraction) and you-research (citation-backed deep research):

1 {
2   "mcpServers": {
3     "you-com": {
4       "serverUrl": "https://api.you.com/mcp",
5       "headers": {
6         "Authorization": "Bearer YDC-YOUR-API-KEY"
7       }
8     }
9   }
10 }

Get a key at you.com/platform.

Quick demo

Research which JavaScript runtimes support native TypeScript execution in 2026, with citations.

Extract https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/upgrade-to/v5/ and summarize the breaking changes section.

Troubleshooting

Server shows red status — check serverUrl (not url); Windsurf’s config format diverges from Claude Desktop’s here.
Tools never get called — Cascade may be deferring to its built-in tools. In a prompt, explicitly ask: “Use the you-com MCP server to search…”
401 errors with API key — verify the Authorization header is exactly Bearer YDC-... with one space; no extra quotes around the value in the JSON.
Server loads but tools missing — restart Windsurf entirely; in-app refresh is unreliable for tool re-discovery.