osaurus-search

name	osaurus-search
description	How to use the web search tools. Default to `search(query=...)` — the plugin auto-picks the best backend and races free fallbacks in parallel. Only override defaults when you have a specific reason.
metadata	{"author":"Osaurus","version":"2.1.0"}

Search

Web search for grounding. Free by default (DuckDuckGo / Brave / Bing scraping, raced in parallel under a 12s wall-clock budget). Upgrades automatically when an API key (Tavily / Brave Search / Serper / Google CSE / Kagi / You.com) is configured.

TL;DR

search(query="latest CVEs in nginx")

That's it. The plugin picks the best backend for you.

When to use

• The user asks a factual question that needs current information → search.
• The user wants news → search_news (defaults to last week).
• The user wants images → search_images.
• You want a grounded answer in one round-trip → search_and_extract (does search + Readability).
• You need URLs to feed to osaurus.fetch.fetch_html for deep extraction → search.

When NOT to use

• Reading a known URL → go straight to osaurus.fetch.fetch_html.
• Searching the user's own files → use the host's working-folder search.
• Real-time stock / weather / sports → those want a dedicated API.

Canonical recipes

Grounded research:

1. search(query="...", time_range="m")
2. for each result.url: osaurus.fetch.fetch_html(url) → markdown
3. Synthesize from the markdowns; cite final_url + published_date.

One-shot grounded answer:

search_and_extract(query="...", max_results=5, extract_count=3)
→ results[].markdown is already populated for the top extract_count hits

Output envelope

Success:

{
  "ok": true,
  "data": {
    "query": "...",
    "provider": "ddg",
    "results": [
      {
        "rank": 1,
        "title": "...",
        "url": "https://...",
        "snippet": "...",
        "published_date": "2026-04-15",
        "source_domain": "example.com",
        "engine": "ddg"
      }
    ],
    "count": 10,
    "next_offset": 10
  },
  "warnings": ["Ignored unknown provider 'auto'; used auto-cascade. ..."]
}

Failure:

{
  "ok": false,
  "error": {
    "code": "NO_RESULTS",
    "message": "No results from any backend.",
    "hint": "Try a broader query or drop site:/filetype:/time_range. For better recall, configure an API key (e.g. TAVILY_API_KEY) in plugin settings."
  },
  "data": { "attempts": [...], "warnings": [...] }
}

Error codes you may see: INVALID_ARGS, NO_RESULTS, PROVIDER_UNAVAILABLE, INTERNAL.

Tips

• Don't splice operators into the query. site: and filetype: translate per-backend; pass them as their own params if you really need them.
• Paginate with offset rather than re-querying for more.
• Snippets vary in quality across backends. For full text, follow up with osaurus.fetch.fetch_html on the top URLs (or just call search_and_extract).

Advanced: better quality with API keys

Configure any of these in the plugin's secrets settings to upgrade from scraping to grounded API search. Priority order (the host automatically prefers the highest-priority configured key):

1. TAVILY_API_KEY — Tavily (best free agent search; 1000 free queries/month)
2. BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY — Brave Search API
3. SERPER_API_KEY — Serper (Google SERP)
4. GOOGLE_CSE_API_KEY + GOOGLE_CSE_CX — Google Custom Search Engine
5. KAGI_API_KEY — Kagi
6. YOU_API_KEY — You.com

If none are configured, the free DDG / Brave / Bing scrapers race in parallel under a 12s budget. Once a key is set, the plugin auto-uses it; no code or argument changes required.