Meilisearch MCP

Prerequisites

• A running Meilisearch instance (e.g. via Podman, Docker, or the binary)
• MEILI_MASTER_KEY environment variable set
• MEILI_HOST environment variable set (defaults to http://localhost:7700)

Indexing documentation

From the scripts/docs-mcp directory, run:

bun run dev index-docs -d ../../src/content/docs -i docs

This walks the directory, strips frontmatter and markup, chunks each file with chonkiejs, and pushes the chunks to the docs index.

Flags

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--dir	-d	—	Directory containing docs to index (required)
--index	-i	docs	Target Meilisearch index name
--host	-h	$MEILI_HOST or http://localhost:7700	Meilisearch host URL
--apiKey	-k	$MEILI_MASTER_KEY	API key
--chunkSize	-s	512	Chunk size in tokens
--extensions	-e	.mdx,.md	File extensions to include

What gets indexed

Each chunk is stored as a document with these fields:

• text — the plain-text chunk content
• title — extracted from frontmatter
• document_name — filename
• document_path — path relative to the input directory
• directory_path — parent directory
• chunk_index / total_chunks — position within the source file

The index is configured with text, title, and document_name as searchable attributes, and directory_path, document_name, and title as filterable.

Registering the MCP server

The Meilisearch MCP server connects to your instance and exposes search tools to Claude Code. It operates at the instance level — all indexes are accessible through a single server.

Add it to your project’s .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "meilisearch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["-n", "meilisearch-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "MEILI_HTTP_ADDR": "http://localhost:7700",
        "MEILI_MASTER_KEY": "${MEILI_MASTER_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

uvx handles installation automatically — no separate uv pip install step needed.

Restart Claude Code to pick up the new server. You can verify it’s connected by asking Claude to search your docs index.

Using with Open WebUI and Ollama

You can also expose the Meilisearch MCP server to Open WebUI using mcpo, which bridges MCP servers to OpenAPI-compatible endpoints.

Create a mcpo-config.json with the same MCP server configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "meilisearch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["-n", "meilisearch-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "MEILI_HTTP_ADDR": "http://localhost:7700",
        "MEILI_MASTER_KEY": "${MEILI_MASTER_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then add mcpo and open-webui alongside Ollama in a docker-compose.yml:

services:
  ollama:
    image: ollama/ollama
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "11434:11434"
    volumes:
      - ollama_data:/root/.ollama
    networks:
      - ollama
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-sf", "http://localhost:11434/"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 30s

  mcpo:
    image: ghcr.io/open-webui/mcpo:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./mcpo-config.json:/app/config.json:ro
    command: ["--host", "0.0.0.0", "--port", "8000", "--config", "/app/config.json"]
    networks:
      - ollama
    secrets:
      - source: meilisearch_MEILI_MASTER_KEY
        target: MEILI_MASTER_KEY
        type: env
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true

  open-webui:
    image: ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3001:8080"
    volumes:
      - open_webui_data:/app/backend/data
    environment:
      - OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://ollama:11434
      - WEBUI_SECRET_KEY=${WEBUI_SECRET_KEY}
    depends_on:
      - ollama
    networks:
      - ollama
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true

volumes:
  ollama_data:
  open_webui_data:

networks:
  ollama:

secrets:
  meilisearch_MEILI_MASTER_KEY:
    external: true

The MEILI_MASTER_KEY is injected into the mcpo container as an environment variable via a Podman/Docker secret. Create it with:

printf '%s' 'your-key-here' | podman secret create meilisearch_MEILI_MASTER_KEY -

Once running, add http://mcpo:8000 as a tool connection in Open WebUI’s admin settings. Ollama models can then search your Meilisearch indexes as tool calls.

Testing the connection

You can test the MCP server independently using the inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uvx -n meilisearch-mcp

Or verify your index from the CLI:

curl -s "$MEILI_HOST/indexes/docs/stats" -H "Authorization: Bearer $MEILI_MASTER_KEY" | jq .