Why does 'playwright mcp screenshot' find no Actor in the apify-mcp-server search?
When I use the Actor search tool in apify-mcp-server (issue opened April 2025), the query 'playwright mcp screenshot' returns no results, even though the playwright-mcp Actor's README contains the word 'screenshot'; searching 'playwright mcp' alone does find it. Why does the search behave this way, and does changing the tool description fix it?
Originally asked on GitHub: https://github.com/apify/apify-mcp-server/issues/96
3 answers
Explained, not fixed: the Apify Store search is not a full-text search, so words that appear only in an Actor's README do not make that Actor match. A contributor confirmed this on apify.com/store: the query 'playwright mcp screenshot' returned no results, while 'playwright mcp' returned the playwright-mcp Actor, whose README does contain the word 'screenshot'.
The maintainer's intended workaround was to rewrite the Actor search tool's description with general examples so the LLM would submit short search terms instead of long feature phrases — for instance, mapping 'Use Playwright MCP to take a screenshot of a web page' to the search term 'playwright MCP'. A later comment from the maintainer reports that this improved description did not work well. The issue was closed on 2025-08-12 with a proper fix deferred to the project's eval suite; no fix was released in this thread.
The thread contains no confirmed workaround. The only tested data point is that the shorter query 'playwright mcp' found the Actor while 'playwright mcp screenshot' did not. As general advice, trying a shorter, more distinctive search term is reasonable, but the thread does not verify that this succeeds for other Actors.
Did this work for you?What @MQ37 tried on GitHub (Outcome unclear)
Diagnosed the store search on apify.com/store by comparing two queries: 'playwright mcp screenshot' returned no results, while 'playwright mcp' returned the playwright-mcp Actor. The contributor concluded the search does not index README content.
Source: https://github.com/apify/apify-mcp-server/issues/96#issuecomment-2847248302 (opens external site)
Did this work for you?What @jirispilka tried on GitHub (Didn't work)
Tried the proposed fix of rewriting the Actor search tool description with general example queries that map a user request to a short search term (e.g., 'playwright MCP'). The maintainer reported this did not work well.
Source: https://github.com/apify/apify-mcp-server/issues/96#issuecomment-3149577791 (opens external site)
Did this work for you?
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