nowfound

AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Almanac MCP, turn Claude Code into a Deep Research agent

I am Rohan, and I have grown really frustrated with CC's search and read tools. They use Haiku to summarise all the search results, so it is really slow and often ends up being very lossy. I built this MCP that you can install into your coding agents so they can actually access the web properly. Right now it can: - search the general web - search Reddit - read and scrape basically any webpage Install it: npx openalmanac setup The MCP is completely free to use. We have also built a central store where you can contribute things you learned while exploring. If you find something useful, you can…

Almanac MCP is a model context protocol that extends Claude Code with web research capabilities. It allows coding agents to search the general web, search Reddit, and scrape webpages directly, addressing performance… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.

  1. 1

    I was looking around for an MCP server that could connect Anna's Archive to Claude Desktop, as I wanted to be able to search and download books directly through the interface. I couldn't find any public implementations, so ended up building one myself. What it does? - It searches Anna's Archive by keywords. - It downloads books from search results. - It works directly in Claude Desktop through MCP. Check out the repository's README for detailed installation and configuration instructions. The code is fully open source and builds run on GitHub Actions for transparency. I figured I'd share,…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Browser MCP connects AI applications to your browser so you can automate tasks using AI. Supported by Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and more.

    2025 · browsermcp.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Send any website components to Cursor or Claude via MCP

    2025 · web-to-mcp.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hi all! I normally work on the PyTorch project but I've been on baby leave for the past month, so I've been playing around with AI as a user rather than a framework implementor. I really liked the agent experience with Claude Code, but I couldn't really justify spending so many dollars on API costs for random side projects. I already pay for a Claude Pro subscription though, and it turns out you can simulate many of Claude Code's features with an MCP. If you have a Pro subscription, check this out! I think it really captures the Claude Code experience quite well, without forcing you to pay…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Rill Browserfree▲540

    The browser where Claude Code and Codex work beside you

    18d ago · rill.love · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Allow AI Agents to help you with Figma designs!

    Jan 2026 · exdst.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    CoreSpeedfree tier, from $20/mo▲332

    One MCP for everything your agents need: apps, memory, tools

    29d ago · corespeed.io · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Agent 37▲401

    Hey HN, I noticed there are 1,000+ MCP skills on GitHub with zero way for creators to charge for them. So I built Agent37. Selling Claude skills today means asking customers to download your skill, set up Claude Code on their laptops, configure MCP servers, and pray it works. No trial, no updates, often you're just handing over the source. Agent37 lets creators upload a skill, share a link, and anyone can try it instantly (no Claude account needed). Built-in Stripe, creators keep 80%. Looking for feedback on the approach. Would you use something like this?

    Mar 2026 · agent37.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Every MCP tool call dumps raw data into Claude Code's 200K context window. A Playwright snapshot costs 56 KB, 20 GitHub issues cost 59 KB. After 30 minutes, 40% of your context is gone. I built an MCP server that sits between Claude Code and these outputs. It processes them in sandboxes and only returns summaries. 315 KB becomes 5.4 KB. It supports 10 language runtimes, SQLite FTS5 with BM25 ranking for search, and batch execution. Session time before slowdown goes from ~30 min to ~3 hours. MIT licensed, single command install: /plugin marketplace add mksglu/claude-context-mode…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hey HN, Claude Code is pretty agentic now. It writes scripts, calls APIs, uses CLIs. But when something requires actually clicking through a website, it stops and asks me to do it. Problem is, I'm often unfamiliar with these platforms myself. "Go to App Store Connect and generate a P8 key" okay but where? I end up spending 10 minutes navigating menus I've never seen before. I started delegating these tasks to Perplexity's Comet browser. It handles the clicking, returns what I need. But copy-pasting between Claude and Comet got old fast. So I built this MCP server to connect them directly.…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    I got tired of playwright-mcp eating through Claude's 200K token limit, so I built this using the new Claude Skills system. Built it with Claude Code itself. Instead of sending accessibility tree snapshots on every action, Claude just writes Playwright code and runs it. You get back screenshots and console output. That's it. 314 lines of instructions vs a persistent MCP server. Full API docs only load if Claude needs them. Same browser automation, way less overhead. Works as a Claude Code plugin or manual install. Token limit issue:…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Some technical context on what we ran into building this. MCP tools don't really work for financial data at scale. One tool call for five years of daily prices dumps tens of thousands of tokens into the context window. And data vendors pack dozens of tools into a single MCP server, schemas alone can eat 50k+ tokens before the agent does anything useful. So we auto-generate typed Python modules from the MCP schemas at workspace init and upload them into the sandbox. The agent just imports them like a normal library. Only a one-line summary per server stays in the prompt. We have around 80…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Open-source Computer Use MCP for AI agents

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    Click▲133

    Live research context for ChatGPT and Claude

    Aug 2026 · useclick.ai · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Open-source alternative to Codex & Claude Code

    May 2026 · shiori.ai · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hi HN! Excited to share our MCP Server at Hyperbrowser - something we’ve been working on for a few days. We think it’s a pretty neat way to connect LLMs and IDEs like Cursor / Windsurf to the internet. Our MCP server exposes seven tools for data collection and browsing: 1. `scrape_webpage` - Extract formatted (markdown, screenshot etc) content from any webpage 2. `crawl_webpages` - Navigate through multiple linked pages and extract LLM-friendly formatted content 3. `extract_structured_data` - Convert messy HTML into structured JSON 4. `search_with_bing` - Query the web and get results…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I built this because I got tired of watching Claude Code read through massive files just to find a few functions. Sourcerer lets AI agents search code semantically and grab exactly the code chunks they need instead of burning tokens on whole files. It uses tree-sitter to parse your codebase and creates a searchable index. So instead of "read auth.py (538 lines)", an agent can search for "user authentication logic" and get back just the relevant functions. Demo: https://asciinema.org/a/736638 GitHub: https://github.com/st3v3nmw/sourcerer-mcp

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    Kaiku▲79

    The task tracker your AI agents already know how to use

    28d ago · kaiku.tech · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    This project (Agents Observe) started as an exploration into building automation harnesses around claude code. I needed a way to see exactly what teams of agents were doing in realtime and to filter and search their output. A few interesting learnings from building and using this: - Claude code hooks are blocking - performance degrades rapidly if you have a lot of plugins that use hooks - Hooks provide a lot more useful info than OTEL data - Claude's jsonl files provide the full picture - Lifecycle management of MCP processes started by plugins is a bit kludgy at best The biggest takeaway is…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    MCP360▲61

    Hey HN Community, I built MCP360 after spending weeks integrating APIs for an AI agent project. Each tool needed its own setup, auth, billing, and maintenance. When any APIs changed, my integrations broke. I got tired of it. MCP360 is a single gateway giving AI agents access to 100+ tools through one config block. Search engines, web scraping, SEO, e-commerce data, maps, domain tools, and more. Real example: Instead of managing Google Search, web scraping, SERP tracking, and keyword research as 4 separate subscriptions (4 bills, 4 auth systems, 4 points of failure), you connect once. Works…

    2025 · mcp360.ai · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hi HN! We’re Theodore and Louis, founders of Armature (YC P26). We reconstruct the entire session behind the MCP tool calls you receive, including what the user asked their agent to do and what the agent thought. You wrap your MCP in 3 lines of code (our SDK is available in Typescript, Python and Go) and start seeing in your dashboard: - All sessions reconstructed: it’s like reading the real conversation the user had inside Claude or ChatGPT! - A ranking of your MCP most popular use cases, built from sessions clustering - The most frequent issues your users’ agents encounter so you can fix…

    Aug 2026 · armature.tech · its alternatives →

  22. 22OS

    Large Language Models (LLMs) are powerful, but they’re limited by fixed context windows and outdated knowledge. What if your AI could access live search, structured data extraction, OCR, and more—all through a standardized interface? We built the JigsawStack MCP Server, an open-source implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that lets any AI model call external tools effortlessly. Here’s what it unlocks: - Web Search & Scraping: Fetch live information and extract structured data from web pages. - OCR & Structured Data Extraction: Process images, receipts, invoices, and handwritten…

    2025 · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    We built a Rust MCP server, which wraps the excellent headless terminal (HT)[1] to makes it available for agentic coding tools. Most agentic coding tools struggle with blocking, interactive terminal tools (all the boilerplate generator, infra CLI tools etc). This is because many existing CLI dev tools are built for humans and require interactive input. We built this so agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Memex, etc) can “see” and “interact” with terminals exactly like humans do. In our demo video [2], you'll see it operating vim/emacs just as a human would - selecting options,…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Claude Code is amazing for individuals but terrible for teams. I spent the last six months building my perfect mix of MCP servers, subagents, commands and skills. Claude Code writes 100% of the code now, but sharing this with my team? Painful. 1. Blog posts and workshops don't work (and don't scale) 2. Committing tools to N repos means N PRs. A tool changes? N more PRs. 3. Same tools, different files or folders for each AI assistant; not everyone uses Claude Code It is like 1999 all over again; FTPing files up to prod and versioning with ".bak" suffixes. So I built sx. It is your team's…

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

Also compare

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →