web-research

name	web-research
description	Search and extraction strategy. Teaches the researcher which of the 8 web tools to use at each stage of a research cycle.
agents	researcher, cognitive

Web research tool selection

You have 8 web tools arranged in tiers. Pick the right tool for the task:

Tier 1 — Brave Search (requires BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY or BRAVE_ANSWERS_API_KEY)

Tool	Best for	Notes
brave_answer	Self-contained factual questions ("what is X", "when did Y")	Fastest, cheapest for simple facts
brave_llm_context	Default hot path — need raw context to reason over	Machine-optimised search results
brave_web_search	Broad discovery with titles, URLs, and snippets	Good for finding multiple sources
brave_news_search	Time-sensitive queries, current events	Returns recent news articles
brave_summarizer	Need citations + follow-up threads	Search + summary chain

Tier 2 — Jina Reader (requires JINA_READER_API_KEY)

• jina_reader: Extract clean markdown from a URL. Better than fetch_url for content extraction.

Tier 3 — Fallback (no API keys needed)

• web_search: DuckDuckGo keyword search. Use when Brave keys are unavailable.
• fetch_url: Raw HTTP GET. Use when Jina key is unavailable, or for non-HTML content.

Decision tree

Factual, self-contained question?     → brave_answer
Need raw context to reason over?      → brave_llm_context (default)
Broad discovery with snippets?        → brave_web_search
Time-sensitive / news?                → brave_news_search
Need citations + follow-up threads?   → brave_summarizer
Have a URL, need full content?        → jina_reader (primary), fetch_url (fallback)
No API keys available?                → web_search (DuckDuckGo fallback)

Quality signals

After extraction, check:

• Does the content have a publication date? Note it.
• Is the source primary (official, authored) or secondary (aggregator)?
• Does the content contradict earlier search results? Flag it explicitly.

Prefer primary sources. When a snippet and a full extraction conflict, trust the full extraction.