About MCP Server for Vertex AI Search
MCP Server for Vertex AI Search is an MCP server that searches documents through Vertex AI. It uses Gemini with Vertex AI grounding so that answers are based on private data stored in one or more Vertex AI data stores.
Key features
- 01Document search over Vertex AI data stores
- 02Gemini responses grounded in private data
- 03Support for multiple Vertex AI data stores
- 04SSE and stdio transport options
- 05YAML config file and command-line search test
Use cases
- 01Letting an AI assistant search internal private documents
- 02Exposing separate search tools for different data stores
MCP support
This is an MCP server that exposes Vertex AI data store search as tools to MCP clients, with each data store's tool name and description set in config.yml.
Configuration
Local server config is the same for every client. Copy it into your client’s MCP config file.
We haven’t collected a package or remote endpoint for this server. Follow the instructions in the project README.
Tools
Local servers expose tools only once running on your machine, and the maintainer has not provided a tool list.
Details
From the project READMEMCP Server for Vertex AI Search
This is a MCP server to search documents using Vertex AI.
Architecture
This solution uses Gemini with Vertex AI grounding to search documents using your private data. Grounding improves the quality of search results by grounding Gemini's responses in your data stored in Vertex AI Datastore. We can integrate one or multiple Vertex AI data stores to the MCP server. For more details on grounding, refer to Vertex AI Grounding Documentation.

How to use
There are two ways to use this MCP server. If you want to run this on Docker, the first approach would be good as Dockerfile is provided in the project.
1. Clone the repository
# Clone the repository
git clone [email protected]:ubie-oss/mcp-vertexai-search.git
# Create a virtual environment
uv venv
# Install the dependencies
uv sync --all-extras
# Check the command
uv run mcp-vertexai-search
Install the python package
The package isn't published to PyPI yet, but we can install it from the repository. We need a config file derives from config.yml.template to run the MCP server, because the python package doesn't include the config template. Please refer to Appendix A: Config file for the details of the config file.
# Install the package
pip install git+https://github.com/ubie-oss/mcp-vertexai-search.git
# Check the command
mcp-vertexai-search --help
Development
Prerequisites
- uv
- Vertex AI data store
- Please look into the official documentation about data stores for more information
Set up Local Environment
# Optional: Install uv
python -m pip install -r requirements.setup.txt
# Create a virtual environment
uv venv
uv sync --all-extras
Run the MCP server
This supports two transports for SSE (Server-Sent Events) and stdio (Standard Input Output).
We can control the transport by setting the --transport flag.
We can configure the MCP server with a YAML file. config.yml.template is a template for the config file. Please modify the config file to fit your needs.
uv run mcp-vertexai-search serve \
--config config.yml \
--transport <stdio|sse>
Test the Vertex AI Search
We can test the Vertex AI Search by using the mcp-vertexai-search search command without the MCP server.
uv run mcp-vertexai-search search \
--config config.yml \
--query <your-query>
Appendix A: Config file
config.yml.template is a template for the config file.
serverserver.name: The name of the MCP server
modelmodel.model_name: The name of the Vertex AI modelmodel.project_id: The project ID of the Vertex AI modelmodel.location: The location of the model (e.g. us-central1)model.impersonate_service_account: The service account to impersonatemodel.generate_content_config: The configuration for the generate content API
data_stores: The list of Vertex AI data storesdata_stores.project_id: The project ID of the Vertex AI data storedata_stores.location: The location of the Vertex AI data store (e.g. us)data_stores.datastore_id: The ID of the Vertex AI data storedata_stores.tool_name: The name of the tooldata_stores.description: The description of the Vertex AI data store
Comments
New to MCP?
From what the protocol is to installing your first server, these answers cover most first questions.
An open protocol that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data in a uniform way. Clients talk to the model; MCP servers provide tools, resources and prompt templates. They exchange standard messages, so one server can be reused by many clients.