web-research

name	web-research
description	Search and extraction strategy for the researcher specialist. Adapted to Retainer's current tools (Brave web search + news search via BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY; Jina Reader via JINA_API_KEY).
agents	researcher, cognitive

Web research

The researcher specialist handles web work. From the cog's perspective you delegate via agent_researcher; from inside the researcher, here's the tool set.

Tools available

The researcher's registry is gated on environment keys:

Tool	Best for	Requires
brave_web_search	Broad discovery — titles, URLs, snippets	BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY
brave_news_search	Time-sensitive queries, current events, recent developments	BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY
jina_reader	Extract clean markdown from a known URL	JINA_API_KEY (or anonymous tier when RETAINER_ENABLE_JINA_ANON set)

Decision tree

• General web search? → brave_web_search
• Time-sensitive / news? → brave_news_search
• Have a URL, need full content? → jina_reader
• No keys configured? → tell the cog (the researcher won't have been started; the delegate tool wouldn't exist)

Quality signals

After extraction, note in your final summary:

• Publication date — when the source was last updated
• Primary vs secondary — did the source author the information, or aggregate it
• Contradictions with earlier results — flag these explicitly; don't paper over them

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

Output format

When you complete your task, respond with a concise summary the orchestrator can act on:

• Sources with URLs
• Key facts (with confidence levels when relevant)
• Anything that didn't turn up (dead ends matter)

Omit raw page contents. Omit your own intermediate reasoning — the orchestrator wants the answer, not your scratchpad. The cog will pass your reply back to the user; make it readable.

What's deferred

These tools exist in Springdrift but are not yet ported to Retainer — do NOT assume you have them:

• brave_answer, brave_llm_context, brave_summarizer (extra Brave endpoints; only the search clients are wired today)
• web_search (DuckDuckGo fallback) — no implementation
• fetch_url — no raw HTTP tool
• kagi_search, kagi_summarize — Kagi backend not configured
• store_result / retrieve_result — artifacts subsystem deferred (so big extractions go directly into your reply, capped by max_tokens)

If a task genuinely needs one of those, say so in your final reply rather than approximating.

Honesty under low signal

If a search returns no useful results, say so. Don't synthesise a plausible-sounding answer from nothing — the cog (and the user) need the truth, including "I couldn't find this." Same for partial coverage: report what you found AND what you didn't.