A Low-Code MCP Framework for Building Complex and Innovative RAG Pipelines
UltraRAG is a Python-based MCP framework developed by Tsinghua University's THUNLP lab, Northeastern University, OpenBMB, and AI9Stars that lets developers build retrieval-augmented generation pipelines by composing independent MCP Servers for core components such as Retriever and Generator, then orchestrating them through an MCP Client using YAML configuration files. The framework supports sequential, loop, and conditional branch control structures, enabling iterative RAG logic with minimal code. It connects to LLMs including GPT, DeepSeek, Qwen, and vLLM-served models, and works with embedding models from Hugging Face sentence-transformers. A built-in Flask-based UI functions as a visual RAG IDE with a Pipeline Builder that synchronizes canvas construction and code editing in real time, plus a knowledge base management module for document question-answering. A standout feature is the AgentCPM-Report integration, an 8B on-device writing agent for localized deep research. Researchers prototyping novel RAG architectures and engineers building production retrieval systems both benefit from the low-code workflow and transparent reasoning visibility introduced in version 3.0.
- ✓Open-source license (Apache-2.0)
- ✓Actively maintained (<30d)
- ✓Healthy fork ratio
- ✓Clear description
- ✓Topics declared
- ✓Mature repo (>1y old)
claude mcp add ultrarag -- python -m uv{
"mcpServers": {
"ultrarag": {
"command": "python",
"args": ["-m", "uv"]
}
}
}MCP Servers overview
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<img alt="UltraRAG" src="./docs/ultrarag.svg" width="55%">
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<h3 align="center">
Less Code, Lower Barrier, Faster Deployment
</h3>
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<a href="https://trendshift.io/repositories/18747" target="_blank"><img src="https://trendshift.io/api/badge/repositories/18747" alt="OpenBMB%2FUltraRAG | Trendshift" style="width: 250px; height: 55px;" width="250" height="55"/></a>
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<a href="https://ultrarag.github.io/"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Homepage-6ABED8?style=for-the-badge&logoColor=white" alt="Homepage"/></a>
<a href="https://ultrarag.openbmb.cn/pages/en/getting_started/introduction"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Documentation-66B89E?style=for-the-badge&logo=bookstack&logoColor=white" alt="Documentation"/></a>
<a href="https://modelscope.cn/datasets/UltraRAG/UltraRAG_Benchmark"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Dataset-DE8EA6?style=for-the-badge&logo=databricks&logoColor=white" alt="Dataset"/></a>
<a href="https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG/tree/rag-paper-daily/rag-paper-daily"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Paper_Daily-A48BC8?style=for-the-badge&logo=arxiv&logoColor=white" alt="Paper Daily"/></a>
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<a href="./docs/README_zh.md"><b>简体中文</b></a> | <b>English</b>
</p>
---
**Latest News** 🔥
- **[2026.01.23]** 🎉 UltraRAG 3.0 Released: Say no to "black box" development—make every line of reasoning logic clearly visible 👉 [📖 Blog](https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG/blob/page/project/blog/en/ultrarag3_0.md)
- **[2026.01.20]** 🎉 AgentCPM-Report Model Released! DeepResearch is finally localized: 8B on-device writing agent AgentCPM-Report is open-sourced 👉 [🤗 Model](https://huggingface.co/openbmb/AgentCPM-Report)
<details>
<summary><b>Previous News</b></summary>
<br>
- **[2025.11.11]** 🎉 UltraRAG 2.1 Released: Enhanced knowledge ingestion & multimodal support, with a more complete unified evaluation system!
- **[2025.09.23]** New daily RAG paper digest, updated every day 👉 [📖 Papers](https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG/tree/rag-paper-daily/rag-paper-daily)
- **[2025.09.09]** Released a Lightweight DeepResearch Pipeline local setup tutorial 👉 [📺 bilibili](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1p8JfziEwM) · [📖 Blog](https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG/blob/page/project/blog/en/01_build_light_deepresearch.md)
- **[2025.09.01]** Released a step-by-step UltraRAG installation and full RAG walkthrough video 👉 [📺 bilibili](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1B9apz4E7K/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=7035ae721e76c8149fb74ea7a2432710) · [📖 Blog](https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG/blob/page/project/blog/en/00_Installing_and_Running_RAG.md)
- **[2025.08.28]** 🎉 UltraRAG 2.0 Released! UltraRAG 2.0 is fully upgraded: build a high-performance RAG with just a few dozen lines of code, empowering researchers to focus on ideas and innovation! We have preserved the UltraRAG v2 code, which can be viewed at [v2](https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG/tree/v2).
- **[2025.01.23]** UltraRAG Released! Enabling large models to better comprehend and utilize knowledge bases. The UltraRAG 1.0 code is still available at [v1](https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG/tree/v1).
</details>
---
## 💡 About UltraRAG
UltraRAG is the first lightweight RAG development framework based on the [Model Context Protocol (MCP)](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro) architecture design, jointly launched by [THUNLP](https://nlp.csai.tsinghua.edu.cn/) at Tsinghua University, [NEUIR](https://neuir.github.io) at Northeastern University, [OpenBMB](https://www.openbmb.cn/home), and [AI9stars](https://github.com/AI9Stars).
Designed for research exploration and industrial prototyping, UltraRAG standardizes core RAG components (Retriever, Generation, etc.) as independent **MCP Servers**, combined with the powerful workflow orchestration capabilities of the **MCP Client**. Developers can achieve precise orchestration of complex control structures such as conditional branches and loops simply through YAML configuration.
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<img alt="UltraRAG Architecture" src="./docs/architecture.png" width=90%>
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### 🖥️ UltraRAG UI
UltraRAG UI transcends the boundaries of traditional chat interfaces, evolving into a visual RAG Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that combines orchestration, debugging, and demonstration.
The system features a powerful built-in Pipeline Builder that supports bidirectional real-time synchronization between "Canvas Construction" and "Code Editing," allowing for granular online adjustments of pipeline parameters and prompts. Furthermore, it introduces an Intelligent AI Assistant to empower the entire development lifecycle, from pipeline structural design to parameter tuning and prompt generation. Once constructed, logic flows can be converted into interactive dialogue systems with a single click. The system seamlessly integrates Knowledge Base Management components, enabling users to build custom knowledge bases for document Q&A. This truly realizes a one-stop closed loop, spanning from underlying logic construction and data governance to final application deployment.
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https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fcf437b7-8b79-42f2-bf4e-e3b7c2a896b9
### ✨ Key Highlights
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<tr>
<td width="50%" valign="top">
**🚀 Low-Code Orchestration of Complex Workflows**
**Inference Orchestration**: Natively supports control structures such as sequential, loop, and conditional branches. Developers only need to write YAML configuration files to implement complex iterative RAG logic in dozens of lines of code.
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**⚡ Modular Extension and Reproduction**
**Atomic Servers**: Based on the MCP architecture, functions are decoupled into independent Servers. New features only need to be registered as function-level Tools to seamlessly integrate into workflows, achieving extremely high reusability.
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**📊 Unified Evaluation and Benchmark Comparison**
**Research Efficiency**: Built-in standardized evaluation workflows, ready-to-use mainstream research benchmarks. Through unified metric management and baseline integration, significantly improves experiment reproducibility and comparison efficiency.
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**🎯 Rapid Interactive Prototype Generation**
**One-Click Delivery**: Say goodbye to tedious UI development. With just one command, Pipeline logic can be instantly converted into an interactive conversational Web UI, shortening the distance from algorithm to demonstration.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
## 📦 Installation
We provide two installation methods: local source code installation (recommended using `uv` for package management) and Docker container deployment.
### Method 1: Source Code Installation
We strongly recommend using [uv](https://github.com/astral-sh/uv) to manage Python environments and dependencies, as it can greatly improve installation speed.
**Prepare Environment**
If you haven't installed uv yet, please execute:
```shell
## Direct installation
pip install uv
## Download
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
```
**Download Source Code**
```shell
git clone https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG.git --depth 1
cd UltraRAG
```
**Install Dependencies**
Choose one of the following modes to install dependencies based on your use case:
**A: Create a New Environment** Use `uv sync` to automatically create a virtual environment and synchronize dependencies:
- Core dependencies: If you only need to run basic core functions, such as only using UltraRAG UI:
```shell
uv sync
```
- Full installation: If you want to fully experience UltraRAG's retrieval, generation, corpus processing, and evaluation functions, please run:
```shell
uv sync --all-extras
```
- On-demand installation: If you only need to run specific modules, keep the corresponding `--extra` as needed, for example:
```shell
uv sync --extra retriever # Retrieval module only
uv sync --extra generation # Generation module only
```
Once installed, activate the virtual environment:
```shell
# Windows CMD
.venv\Scripts\activate.bat
# Windows Powershell
.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
# macOS / Linux
source .venv/bin/activate
```
**B: Install into an Existing Environment** To install UltraRAG into your currently active Python environment, use `uv pip`:
```shell
# Core dependencies
uv pip install -e .
# Full installation
uv pip install -e ".[all]"
# On-demand installation
uv pip install -e ".[retriever]"
```
### Method 2: Docker Container Deployment
If you prefer not to configure a local Python environment, you can deploy using Docker.
**Get Code and Images**
```shell
# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG.git --depth 1
cd UltraRAG
# 2. Prepare the image (choose one)
# Option A: Pull from Docker Hub
docker pull hdxin2002/ultrarag:v0.3.0-base-cpu # Base version (CPU)
docker pull hdxin2002/ultrarag:v0.3.0-base-gpu # Base version (GPU)
docker pull hdxin2002/ultrarag:v0.3.0 # Full version (GPU)
# Option B: Build locally
docker build -t ultrarag:v0.3.0 .
```
**Start the Container**
```shell
# Start the container (Port 5050 is mapped by default)
docker run -it --gpus all -p 5050:5050 <docker_image_name>
```
Note: After the container starts, UltraRAG UI will run automatically. You can directly access `http://localhost:5050` in your browser to use it.
### Verify Installation
After installation, run the following example command to check if the environment is normal:What people ask about UltraRAG
What is OpenBMB/UltraRAG?
+
OpenBMB/UltraRAG is mcp servers for the Claude AI ecosystem. A Low-Code MCP Framework for Building Complex and Innovative RAG Pipelines It has 5.6k GitHub stars and was last updated today.
How do I install UltraRAG?
+
You can install UltraRAG by cloning the repository (https://github.com/OpenBMB/UltraRAG) or following the README instructions on GitHub. ClaudeWave also provides quick install blocks on this page.
Is OpenBMB/UltraRAG safe to use?
+
Our security agent has analyzed OpenBMB/UltraRAG and assigned a Trust Score of 100/100 (tier: Verified). See the full breakdown of passed checks and flags on this page.
Who maintains OpenBMB/UltraRAG?
+
OpenBMB/UltraRAG is maintained by OpenBMB. The last recorded GitHub activity is from today, with 14 open issues.
Are there alternatives to UltraRAG?
+
Yes. On ClaudeWave you can browse similar mcp servers at /categories/mcp, sorted by popularity or recent activity.
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