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Show HN: Need is a CLI tool discovery as an MCP server (agentneeds.dev)
4 points by schreibertuc 93 days ago
need is an MCP server that gives AI agents access to a searchable index of 10,000+ CLI tools. The agent searches in plain English, installs the best match (restricted to brew/npm/pip/cargo/apt so no arbitrary shell), and reports whether it worked. Those reports improve rankings for every future search.

One command sets it up: npx @agentneeds/need setup - works with Claude Code and Cursor.

Search is embeddings + pgvector with a keyword boost and full-text fallback. With no community signals yet, ranking is pure semantic similarity. As people use it, the signal-weighted ranking kicks in.

Also works as a plain CLI if you just want to find tools yourself: need "compress video without losing quality"

Try some queries and tell me what's ranked wrong that's genuinely the most useful feedback right now.
2 comments
sachinkg12 93 days ago
Tested a few queries in Docker.

  - "compress video without losing quality" → #1 was jpegrescan (a JPEG tool). ffmpeg is in the index but didn't surface at all.
                                                                                                                
  - "pretty print json" → jq ranked #7. 
                                         
  - "find files by name" → returned duplicate-file finders (rdfind, duff). fd/fzf didn't appear. 
                                                                                                                                               
  - "download youtube video" → yt-dlp not in results at all.
Hope this helps
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schreibertuc 93 days ago
Thank you!
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schreibertuc 93 days ago
I built this because every time I ask Claude or Cursor to use a CLI tool, it either hallucinates a package name or ecommends something outdated.

Need is an MCP server that gives AI agents a verified index of 10,000+ CLI tools with semantic search. The agent searches,installs, uses the tool, then reports back whether it worked so rankings improve with every use.

Try it: npx @agentneeds/need "compress png images"

Install globally with npm install -g @agentneeds/need and it auto-configures for Claude Code, Cursor, and Claude Desktop. The feedback loop is the key part when an agent reports that a tool worked (or didn't), future searches rank better tools higher. It's like PageRank but for CLI tools, powered by real agent usage.

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