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AutoSearch Channel Research Final Playbook

Date: 2026-04-19 Coverage: mcpmarket.com research + hands-on testing + TikHub paid API integration Positioning: This is the final master guide. The previously scattered docs (mcp-channel-research.md / mcp-test-plan.md / mcp-test-results.md / mcp-no-cookie-inventory.md / mcp-final-summary.md / tikhub-smoke-test.md) are consolidated here. All future channel decisions should start from this document.

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TL;DR

1. Free and usable without cookies: Sogou WeChat, open-websearch (4 engines), Paper Search MCP (21 academic sources), PullPush (Reddit history), direct RSS reads, Jina Reader (some sites), and 13 official APIs.
2. 5 of 8 hard targets were unblocked through paid TikHub: Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Zhihu, Twitter/X, and Douyin. The remaining 3 (flaky Weibo upstream, Instagram/LinkedIn parameters not fully tuned) were not fully solved in this round.
3. Final architecture: AutoSearch uses BYOK (users provide their own TikHub key) and declares dependencies with requires: [env:TIKHUB_API_KEY]. The base URL is read from an env var so environments can switch cleanly.

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Part 1: No-Cookie Usable Inventory (41)

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A. Hands-On PASS in This Round (9)

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B. Official APIs Known to Work (13, Integrated in AutoSearch or One-Line Integration)

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C. New Categories Found on mcpmarket (AutoSearch Gaps) (11)

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D. Existing Channel Reinforcements (8)

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Part 2: Hard-Target Breakthrough Matrix

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🔴 Integrated (Paid TikHub, 5/8)

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⚠️ Not Fully Solved in This Round (3/8)

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🟢 Truly Impossible Without Cookies

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Part 3: TikHub Field Notes

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Basic Information

• Homepage: https://tikhub.io · API base: https://api.tikhub.io/api/v1/
• Auth: Authorization: Bearer $TIKHUB_API_KEY
• OpenAPI spec: GET https://api.tikhub.io/openapi.json (1058 endpoints)
• Billing: pay-per-request, average **$0.0036/request** (official marketing says starts at$0.001; measured cost is 3-4x higher)
• Free quota: Daily check-in gives a small amount of free credit

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Platform Coverage (Confirmed Working)

TikTok (204) · Douyin (247) · Instagram (82) · Xiaohongshu (71)
Weibo (64)  · Bilibili (41) · YouTube (37)   · Kuaishou (33)
Zhihu (32)  · LinkedIn (25) · Reddit (24)    · WeChat · Twitter
Threads · TikHub Utilities · Other

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Key Pitfalls (In the Order Encountered)

1. Registration requires email verification. Without verification, every endpoint returns 403 “email not verified”.
2. The free tier covers only some endpoints. Xiaohongshu/Weibo/Twitter/Douyin all return 402 (Payment Required) until paid balance is > 0. Zhihu and Bilibili are covered by the free tier.
3. Do not use web_v3 for Xiaohongshu. /xiaohongshu/web_v3/fetch_search_notes returns 400. Use the older /xiaohongshu/web/search_notes.
4. Do not use app/v3 for Douyin. /douyin/app/v3/fetch_video_search_result returns 400. Use /douyin/web/fetch_video_search_result_v2; data is under data.business_data[i].data (two nested layers).
5. Weibo endpoints are unstable across versions. web_v2/fetch_realtime_search returns 400; app/fetch_search_all returns 422; web/fetch_search returns 200 but cards fluctuates.
6. 400 = upstream scraping failure, not necessarily bad parameters. TikHub’s 400 body says “please check docs and parameters”, but in practice TikHub itself failed to scrape the target site. This kind of 400 is not billed (Only pay for successful requests).
7. Twitter structure is already flattened. data.timeline is a list, not the original GraphQL-style nested instructions structure. Iterate it directly. Fields: screen_name / text / favorites / views / retweets / replies / created_at / tweet_id / lang.

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🚨 Security Note: The Key Is Echoed in Error Responses

# BAD — printing the response body directly leaks the key
except httpx.HTTPStatusError as e:
    log.error("TikHub failed", body=e.response.text)  # ❌

# GOOD — sanitize before logging
def sanitize(data: dict) -> dict:
    detail = data.get("detail", {})
    if isinstance(detail, dict):
        detail.pop("headers", None)
        for k in list(detail.keys()):
            if "auth" in k.lower() or "token" in k.lower():
                detail[k] = "<redacted>"
    return data

except httpx.HTTPStatusError as e:
    log.error("TikHub failed", body=sanitize(e.response.json()))  # ✅

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MCP vs API Choice

• AutoSearch is a Python plugin installed with pip install. Using MCP would require users to additionally install Node.js + mcp-remote + the TikHub MCP server (3 dependencies)
• AutoSearch channels are already “tools”; calling MCP from inside a tool is tool-calling-a-tool, and JSON-RPC over stdio adds a useless serialization layer
• Enabling the full TikHub MCP exposes 1000+ tool schemas and injects roughly 400K tokens into Claude context, which is untenable
• Even selecting only the 6 hard-target platforms still exposes ~470 tools (~190K tokens), which is still not ideal

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Part 4: Final AutoSearch Integration Architecture

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BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) Is the Only Reasonable Plan

• ❌ Hardcode a TikHub key into the release build (a pip package exposes plaintext)
• ❌ Share one key across all users (violates ToS and drains the balance)

• ✅ Users register and top up at tikhub.io themselves
• ✅ export TIKHUB_API_KEY=<your-key>, and AutoSearch reads the env var
• ✅ SKILL.md declares requires: [env:TIKHUB_API_KEY]; without a key, the channel is automatically marked unavailable while other channels continue running

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Channel Structure (Validated by Pilot)

autosearch/lib/
└── tikhub_client.py              # Generic client + error redaction + 5xx retries

autosearch/skills/channels/zhihu/
├── SKILL.md                      # frontmatter declares via_tikhub method
└── methods/
    └── via_tikhub.py             # maps /zhihu/web/fetch_article_search_v3 to Evidence

tests/lib/test_tikhub_client.py   # client unit tests, including redaction assertion
tests/channels/zhihu/test_via_tikhub.py  # method unit tests

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Leave Room for a Future Proxy

base_url = os.getenv("TIKHUB_BASE_URL", "https://api.tikhub.io")

export TIKHUB_BASE_URL=https://your-proxy.example.com/tikhub
export TIKHUB_API_KEY=<your-proxy-token>

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5 Channels Pending Integration (Priority Order)

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Appendix

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A. Test Command Quick Reference (Copy-Paste Ready)

# Sogou WeChat + readability cleanup = full-text Official Account search
cd /tmp/mcp-smoke/ows
node build/index.js fetch-web \
  "https://weixin.sogou.com/weixin?type=2&query=<KEYWORD>" \
  --readability --spawn --json

# open-websearch multi-engine
node build/index.js search "<query>" --engine duckduckgo --limit 5 --spawn --json
node build/index.js search "<query>" --engine csdn --limit 5 --spawn --json

# Paper Search MCP academic search
cd /tmp/mcp-smoke/paper-search-mcp
python3 -c "
import sys; sys.path.insert(0,'.')
from paper_search_mcp.academic_platforms.arxiv import ArxivSearcher
s = ArxivSearcher()
for p in s.search('<query>', max_results=5):
    print(p.title, p.url)
"

# PullPush Reddit history
curl -s "https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/submission/?subreddit=<NAME>&after=<TS>&before=<TS>&size=10"

# Jina Reader for any URL
curl -sL "https://r.jina.ai/<URL>"

# Any TikHub endpoint, with redacted result inspection
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $TIKHUB_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.tikhub.io/api/v1/zhihu/web/fetch_article_search_v3?keyword=<q>" \
  -o /tmp/t.json
python3 -c "
import json
d = json.load(open('/tmp/t.json'))
detail = d.get('detail', {})
if isinstance(detail, dict): detail.pop('headers', None)
print(json.dumps(d, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False)[:1000])
"
rm -f /tmp/t.json  # Key point: remove temp file that may contain echoed key data

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B. External Links

• mcpmarket.com — research source for this round
• tikhub.io — paid platform API
• github.com/Aas-ee/open-webSearch — 8-engine free SERP
• github.com/openags/paper-search-mcp — 21 academic sources
• github.com/jacklenzotti/pullpush-mcp — Reddit history
• r.jina.ai — free URL -> markdown via Jina Reader

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C. Related Docs (Before This Round)

• mcp-channel-research.md — initial research
• mcp-channel-test-plan.md — test plan
• mcp-test-results.md — first round of hands-on tests
• mcp-no-cookie-inventory.md — no-cookie inventory
• mcp-final-summary.md — phase summary
• tikhub-smoke-test.md — detailed TikHub smoke test

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D. Cost Ledger (As of 2026-04-19)

• TikHub: $0.053 (19 smoke requests)
• Other: $0 (all free options)

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Appendix E. 2026-04-19 Supplemental Scan (New No-Key + No-Cookie Options)

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🔴 High Value (Strongly Recommended)

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🟡 Integrate As Needed

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🟢 Basic Utilities (Occasional Use)

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mcpmarket Has No Coverage for These Categories

• Toutiao / Baijiahao / NetEase Hao (Chinese news aggregators)
• Reuters / TechCrunch / Bloomberg (professional news, RSS only)
• Coursera / edX / Khan Academy / MOOC
• Chinese government open data (National Bureau of Statistics, customs)
• ESPN / sports data
• Air quality / environmental data / real-time carbon emissions

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2026-04-19 Hands-On Verification (5 Core MCPs)

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Updated AutoSearch Priority After the Scan

1. FRED + World Bank (macroeconomic signals, no key and no cookie in one step)
2. Public APIs Directory (metatool; lets AutoSearch automatically discover new channels)
3. Open Library (foundation for academic/publishing research)

Wikipedia + Wikidata          # encyclopedia       ✅ verified
Google Trends                 # trends             ✅ verified (flaky risk)
Hugging Face Hub              # AI models          ✅ verified
Public APIs Directory         # metatool           ✅ verified
Google Patents                # patents            not verified
CVE/NVD                       # security           not verified
FRED + World Bank             # macroeconomics     not verified
Open Library                  # books              not verified