mcpField
N
Need

Need

Local
github.com/tuckerschreiberDeveloper Tools10Updated 32w ago
Repository

About Need

need helps AI agents and developers discover CLI tools through semantic search over a verified index, with rankings updated from installation feedback. It provides both an MCP server and a standalone CLI.

Key features

  1. 01Semantically search CLI tools
  2. 02Index over 10,000 tools
  3. 03Install matching tools
  4. 04Adjust rankings from usage feedback
  5. 05Limit installs with an allowlist
  6. 06Provide a standalone CLI

Use cases

  1. 01Find a CLI tool to compress PNGs
  2. 02Discover tools for file conversion
  3. 03Let an agent install and use a matching tool
  4. 04Improve future searches with install results

MCP support

The MCP server exposes search, installation, and usage-reporting tools, enabling agents to discover, install, use, and report on tools.

#cli#mcp#tool-discovery#ai-agents#semantic-search

Configuration

Local server config is the same for every client. Copy it into your client’s MCP config file.

mcp.json · Universal config
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "need": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@agentneeds/need"
      ]
    }
  }
}
Run commandnpx -y @agentneeds/need

Local servers need a runtime on your machine (e.g. Node.js 18+). Config file locations differ by client; see your client’s docs.

Packages
npm@agentneeds/need

Tools

3

Saved tool list · updated 3w ago

ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
querystringYesWhat you need the tool to do, in plain English
limitnumberNoMax results to return

Details

From the project README

need

Tool discovery for AI agents.

CI npm version license downloads

AI agents hallucinate package names. need gives them a verified index of 10,000+ CLI tools — and a closed feedback loop that gets smarter with every install.

need in action inside Claude Code

What happens

You ask Claude to "compress these PNGs". Claude doesn't have pngquant installed and doesn't know what the best tool is. But need is running as an MCP server in the background, so Claude automatically:

  1. Searches need for "compress png images"
  2. Installs the top result (brew install pngquant)
  3. Runs it on your files
  4. Reports that it worked — so the next agent's search ranks pngquant higher

You never interact with need directly. You just see the result.

  search → install → use → report
    ↑                        |
    └────── rankings ────────┘

Install

npm install -g @agentneeds/need

That's it. MCP servers are automatically configured for Claude Code, Cursor, and Claude Desktop on install. Your AI agent can immediately discover and install CLI tools without you doing anything.

Or try it now without installing: npx @agentneeds/need "compress png images"

How agents use it

Under the hood, need exposes three MCP tools that agents call autonomously:

  1. search_tools — semantic search across 10,000+ CLI tools
  2. install_tool — install the best match (security allowlist: brew, apt, npm, pip, cargo only)
  3. report_tool_usage — report success or failure, improving rankings for every future agent

No API keys. No accounts. No configuration. The agent handles the entire loop without leaving your editor.

Works for humans too

need also works as a standalone CLI — semantic search that understands intent, not just keywords.

need convert pdf to png
need find duplicate files
need compress video without losing quality

How it works

Queries are embedded with OpenAI's text-embedding-3-small and matched against a pgvector database of CLI tools. Results are ranked by semantic similarity combined with community success/failure signals from report_tool_usage.

Browse tools

Explore all 10,000+ indexed tools at agentneeds.dev.

Architecture

PackageDescription
cli/The need CLI and MCP server (npm)
api/Search API — Cloudflare Workers + Neon Postgres + pgvector
site/Marketing site and tool directory (agentneeds.dev)

Contributing

git clone https://github.com/tuckerschreiber/need.git
cd need
npm install
cd cli && npm run build && npm test

License

MIT

Comments

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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.