[he-yufeng]

Fixes #4199.

Summary

mcp-server-fetch always called readabilipy with use_readability=True. That path shells out through Node.js, but the server is installed and documented as a Python package. If Node is missing or the Node readability path is slow/misconfigured, HTML fetches can hang until the MCP client times out.

This patch keeps the stronger Node.js readability path when node is available, but avoids making it an undeclared hard runtime requirement:

• auto-detect node before choosing the readability backend
• fall back to readabilipy's Python-only path when Node is unavailable
• add --no-readability-js for hosts that have Node installed but want the Python-only backend
• document the behavior in the fetch README

Validation

• python -m py_compile src/fetch/src/mcp_server_fetch/server.py src/fetch/tests/test_server.py
• src/fetch/.venv/Scripts/python.exe -m pip install -e src/fetch
• src/fetch/.venv/Scripts/python.exe -m pytest tests -q from src/fetch
• src/fetch/.venv/Scripts/python.exe -m py_compile src/mcp_server_fetch/server.py tests/test_server.py from src/fetch
• src/fetch/.venv/Scripts/python.exe -m ruff check src/mcp_server_fetch/server.py tests/test_server.py from src/fetch
• git diff --check origin/main..HEAD

[LuuOW]

Technical audit: Verified MCP server implementation for consistency with current SDK patterns.

[he-yufeng]

extract_content_from_html still lacks a python-only fallback on main, so the failure path this fixes is still live. Any chance of getting eyes on this?

[changeset-bot]

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[cliffhall]

Thank you for this pull request, and apologies for the long wait for a response.

Since it was opened, the reference servers have been rebuilt for the 2026-07-28 MCP specification (#4857) and released as v2, so this diff no longer applies to the code as it stands. This repository also now accepts issues, not pull requests, from anyone but its maintainers: design and implementation are done by the maintainers through a prompt-driven workflow, so outside PRs are closed rather than reviewed. The policy is in CONTRIBUTING.md.

This is not a judgment on the change or on you. The problem it addresses still applies to v2 and is tracked in #4199, which links back to this PR as a prototype and credits you. Please add anything further there.

This is part of the backlog triage in #4875.