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web-search

General & other

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Updated 10-15 20:13

About this skill

Web Search

Run a search across one or many providers, get a JSON file you can pipe through rg, jq, or any other tool. Use this whenever the answer depends on current information that may not be in your training data — recent releases, today's news, a specific vendor's API as of this week, real-world example usage of a library, security advisories, etc.

Decision: should I use this skill?

Question matches Use web-search? Why
"What is the current X?" / "What's the latest Y?" yes Time-sensitive
"Find examples of how people use library Z" yes Real-world code corpus
"What did vendor announce about A this month?" yes Recent vendor announcements
"Look up the docs for command-line flag B" yes Authoritative reference
"What's the syntax for X?" (well-known language feature) no Use training knowledge
"Explain the difference between concept C and D" maybe Use training first; confirm with search if user wants citations
"Find the file in this codebase that does X" no Use grep / explore; not web search

If you decide to search, choose the right invocation pattern below.

How to invoke

Three patterns, in order of complexity:

Pattern 1: single provider (most common)

python3 scripts/web-search "<your query>"

Uses the configured default provider (DuckDuckGo if no API keys are set up). Reads stdout for a human-readable preview AND a machine footer that names the result file:

=== duckduckgo (10 results, 393ms) ===
  [1] Python (programming language)
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)
      Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language...
  [2] ...

--- WEBSEARCH ---
RESULT_FILE: /tmp/web-search/20260501T073731Z/combined.json
RUN_DIR:     /tmp/web-search/20260501T073731Z
PROVIDERS:   duckduckgo
TOTAL_RESULTS: 10

Pattern 2: specific provider

python3 scripts/web-search --provider tavily "<query>"
python3 scripts/web-search --provider perplexity "<query>" --max-results 5
python3 scripts/web-search --provider anthropic "<query>"

Use a specific provider when you want a known feature — Perplexity for recency-filtered queries, Tavily for clean LLM snippets, Anthropic/OpenAI/xAI for model-mediated synthesis.

Pattern 3: parallel multi-provider

# Subset of providers in parallel:
python3 scripts/web-search --providers tavily,brave,perplexity "<query>"

# Every configured provider in parallel:
python3 scripts/web-search --all "<query>"

Use multi-provider when:

  • the topic is novel and you want diverse indexes triangulating
  • a single provider returned thin or unrelated results on the first try
  • the user asked for "thorough research" or "from multiple sources"

The skill saves each provider's output independently, so partial failures still produce useful data.

Pattern 4: sequential fallback chain (config-driven)

Add a fallback field to your config and the skill runs providers sequentially, stopping at the first one that returns results:

{
  "default": "brave",
  "fallback": ["openai", "duckduckgo", "mwmbl"]
}

Now python3 scripts/web-search "<query>" (no --provider flag) tries brave first; if it errors out OR returns 0 results, it falls through to openai; missing credentials silently skip a slot, so the chain proceeds to duckduckgo, etc. Footer reports MODE: fallback and FALLBACK_TRIED: <providers that failed>.

Use a fallback chain when:

  • you want resilience against rate limits / outages on a paid provider
  • you want a free safety net under a paid primary
  • you're future-proofing — list openai in the chain today and it activates the moment you add an apiKey

--provider, --providers, --all all override the chain — use those when you want a specific behavior for one call.

Reading the results

Every run writes to <TMP_ROOT>/<run-id>/. The path appears in stdout as RESULT_FILE:. Default <TMP_ROOT> is /tmp/web-search on macOS/Linux and <system-temp>/web-search on Windows.

Three useful flags for downstream automation:

Flag Effect
--print-path-only Print only the absolute combined.json path. Use inside $(...).
--json Print the full manifest JSON to stdout. Pipe straight into jq.
--no-preview Skip the human preview, keep only the machine footer.

Pipelines (the point of this skill)

The whole point of dumping JSON to disk is so you can filter, transform, and combine results without re-running the search. Examples:

# Get every URL across all providers:
RESULT=$(python3 scripts/web-search --all --print-path-only "...")
jq -r '.manifests[].results[].url' "$RESULT"

# Filter results to lines mentioning "release":
rg -i "release" "$RESULT"

# Stream straight from --json without disk:
python3 scripts/web-search --json "..." | jq '.manifests[].results[0]'

# Top result per provider:
jq -r '.manifests[] | "\(.provider): \(.results[0].title) - \(.results[0].url)"' "$RESULT"

# Dedupe across providers, sorted by score:
jq '[.manifests[].results[]] | unique_by(.url) | sort_by(-(.score // 0)) | .[:10]' "$RESULT"

Many more recipes in references/pipelines.md.

When the wrapper is not available

If the host has curl but no Python (some Windows machines, distroless containers, jailed CI), invoke the providers directly. Every provider's exact request shape is documented in references/curl-recipes.md. The output schema matches what the skill produces internally — same fields, same names.

Configuration

The skill works with zero configuration — DuckDuckGo and MWMBL accept anonymous calls. Provider variety improves with credentials. Drop a config file in any of these locations:

OS Path
macOS / Linux ~/.config/web-search/config.json
Windows %APPDATA%\web-search\config.json
Any (project-local) ./web-search.json
Any (env var) $WEBSEARCH_CONFIG points to a file

Or set the matching env var (TAVILY_API_KEY, BRAVE_API_KEY, etc.) and the skill picks it up. See references/setup.md for per-provider key acquisition steps.

Validate your setup:

python3 scripts/web-search --check
python3 scripts/web-search --list-providers

baseUrl override (every provider)

Every provider supports a baseUrl field that fully replaces the default endpoint:

{
  "providers": {
    "tavily":    {"apiKey": "tvly-...", "baseUrl": "https://eu.api.tavily.com/search"},
    "anthropic": {"apiKey": "sk-ant-...", "baseUrl": "https://anthropic-gw.internal.example.com/v1/messages"},
    "openai":    {"apiKey": "sk-...", "baseUrl": "http://localhost:8787/openai/v1/responses"}
  }
}

Use it for self-hosted proxies, regional mirrors, corporate gateways, or local mocks. The override is complete — the skill does not concatenate with the default. See references/base-urls.md for concrete patterns.

Cross-platform behavior

Identical commands work on macOS, Linux, WSL, Git Bash, Windows native, and containers. The Python script uses only the standard library and pathlib.Path for path handling — no shell-isms, no /-vs-\ issues.

Windows-specific notes:

# PowerShell:
$env:TAVILY_API_KEY = "tvly-..."
python scripts\web-search "your query"

# cmd.exe:
set TAVILY_API_KEY=tvly-...
python scripts\web-search "your query"

The shebang #!/usr/bin/env python3 is ignored on Windows — invoke python (or py) explicitly. Full guide in references/platform-notes.md.

Provider selection guide

Provider Auth Best for
duckduckgo none Quick factual lookups; "what is X"
mwmbl none Free fallback for actual web links
exa required Semantic search; technical queries
tavily required LLM-friendly clean snippets
brave required Independent index; privacy-sensitive
serper required Google's organic results, cheap
google-cse required + CSE id Official Google with custom engine
z-ai required Chinese-language queries
perplexity required Recency-filtered; pure or with answer
xai required Grok web_search + x_search (X/Twitter posts)
openai required Web search synthesized by GPT
anthropic required Web search synthesized by Claude

Full catalog with API shapes, server caps, and quirks: references/providers/index.md. Each provider has its own dedicated page (e.g. providers/tavily.md, providers/anthropic.md).

Domain filtering

Restrict results to or away from specific domains:

python3 scripts/web-search "..." --include docs.python.org,python.org
python3 scripts/web-search "..." --exclude reddit.com,medium.com

Both --include and --exclude accept comma-separated lists. Some providers (z-ai, xAI) have stricter caps — see the per-provider pages under references/providers/. Allowed and blocked are mutually exclusive at call time.

Cost awareness

Tier Providers
Free, no key duckduckgo, mwmbl
Free with key (small free tier) tavily, serper, google-cse, perplexity (small)
Paid per call brave, z-ai, perplexity (volume), xai, openai, anthropic

Model-mediated providers (xai, openai, anthropic) charge per call AND per token. Set maxUses (Anthropic) or max_tool_calls (OpenAI) in config to cap runaway agentic loops. For broad sweeps prefer the cheaper non-model providers and reserve LLM-mediated search for synthesis.

Failure modes

Symptom Cause Fix
config error: No default provider configured No keys set, default unset Run --check; configure at least one provider or use --provider duckduckgo
[provider] HTTP 401 Invalid or expired API key Rotate the key; --check to verify
[provider] HTTP 429 Rate limit hit Lower --parallelism, add delay between runs, or switch providers
Failed to parse response: ... Upstream changed schema OR baseUrl points at wrong path Inspect <provider>-raw.json in the run dir
Empty preview, 0 results Query too narrow OR provider has no relevant index Try --all or a different provider

The raw upstream response is always saved at <run-dir>/<provider>-raw.json so you can inspect failures without re-querying.

Reference index

File Contents
references/providers/index.md + per-provider pages Each of the 12 providers has its own page: endpoint, auth, request/response shape, setup, curl recipe, quirks, baseUrl pattern. The index has the comparison table and selection guide.
references/setup.md Step-by-step API key acquisition for each provider
references/pipelines.md rg / jq / awk recipes for filtering and combining results
references/curl-recipes.md Direct curl invocations per provider — Python-less fallback
references/multi-provider.md Parallel fan-out strategies, consensus ranking, failure isolation
references/result-schema.md Canonical JSON output schema; per-provider field mappings
references/platform-notes.md macOS / Linux / Windows / WSL / containers gotchas
references/base-urls.md baseUrl override patterns for proxies, gateways, mocks, mirrors

Quick reference

python3 scripts/web-search [OPTIONS] "<query>"

  --provider NAME         Single provider (overrides default)
  --providers a,b,c       Comma-separated subset, run in parallel
  --all                   Run every configured provider in parallel
  --max-results N         Cap per provider (default 10)
  --include DOMAIN[,...]  Allow-list domains
  --exclude DOMAIN[,...]  Block-list domains
  --config PATH           Override config file
  --tmp-dir PATH          Override output directory
  --json                  Print full manifest to stdout
  --print-path-only       Print only the result file path
  --raw                   Print raw upstream JSON
  --list-providers        Show configured providers and exit
  --check                 Validate config, exit 0 if any provider works

When in doubt:

python3 scripts/web-search --provider duckduckgo "<query>"   # always works, no key needed