websearch
Skill1 starsChanged 4 months agoApache-2.0View on GitHub
Routes any web task to the best-fitting search provider (Exa, Tavily, Perplexity, Firecrawl, Valyu). Use when the user asks to "search the web", "look up online", "find information", "research", "deep research", "scrape a page", "extract content from a URL", "crawl a website", "find papers", "find companies", "find people", "fact-check", "get a cited answer", "monitor a page", or asks meta-questions like "which search tool should I use", "what web search do we have", "compare search providers", or when multiple web providers could serve the same request and one must be chosen.
- Reads credentials
5 other projects use a version of this.
Adopted by
Most recently taken up by
- PrimeIntellect-ai/prime-agenttheir own version, first seen Oct 8, 2026
- mihail-gribov/ai-agent-toolstheir own version, first seen Aug 27, 2026
- wangbooth/skillstheir own version, first seen Aug 14, 2026
- dekoza/oh-my-sloptheir own version, first seen Mar 19, 2026
- roryyu/websearch-free-skilltheir own version, first seen Mar 18, 2026
Other versions5 projects use a version of this.
Word for word · 0
None found.
Edited · 0
None found.
Wrote their own version · 5
- PrimeIntellect-ai/prime-agent★ 23ksame name
- wangbooth/skills★ 7same name
- dekoza/oh-my-slop★ 4same name
- roryyu/websearch-free-skill★ 2same name
- mihail-gribov/ai-agent-tools★ 0same name
How matches are found. Word for word: the exact same text. Edited: shares passages with this file (“99% same” means 99% of its five-word phrases also appear here; 10% or more counts). Their own version: similar meaning, or, weakest, the same name. We can’t tell which project had it first. Projects are counted among the 200 most-starred candidates, and mentions are links to the repository we found, up to 50 per site, so both counts are a floor.
In this repository2 other files it gives its agents.
- AGENTS.mdAGENTS.md
- perplexitySkill
The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
2 rules. 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 1 is very specific to this project.
0
Common
Most of the 5 edited versions we read keep these.
1
Distinctive
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
1
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Distinctive: line 38
Before routing, verify the chosen provider is usable (cheap checks, never print key values):
- Very specific: line 53
If nothing is configured at all: Tavily and Firecrawl still work keyless for basic search/extract.
“Common” is measured: kept by at least 6 in 10 of the 5 edited versions of this file we could read. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
Web Search Router
Five providers, one decision. This skill picks the provider; the provider's own skill or CLI does the work. Load the provider's skill after routing — it has the exact syntax.
Routing table
| Task intent | Provider | Use |
| Semantic/neural search — find by meaning, not keywords | Exa | exa-search skill |
| Find pages similar to a URL; entity discovery (companies, people, papers, code) | Exa | exa-search / build-with-exa skills |
| Get contents/text of result URLs from an Exa search | Exa | exa-contents skill |
| General web search, news, quick lookups | Tavily | tvly search (tavily-search skill) |
| Extract clean content from 1-20 known URLs | Tavily | tvly extract (tavily-extract skill) |
| Crawl or map a site's structure | Tavily | tvly crawl / tvly map skills |
| Synthesized, citation-grounded answer; comparative reasoning; "just answer the question" | Perplexity | bundled Perplexity skills (this plugin, Sonar API) |
| Deep-research report, multi-source synthesis | Perplexity (sonar-deep-research) or Tavily research; Valyu when a file deliverable is wanted | respective skill |
| Heavy scraping: JS rendering, anti-bot, screenshots, page interaction, change monitoring | Firecrawl | firecrawl CLI + skill family |
| Whole-site crawl into LLM-ready markdown | Firecrawl | firecrawl crawl |
| Academic literature (arXiv, PubMed, bioRxiv), clinical trials, patents | Valyu | valyu search (valyu-cli skill) |
| Financial/SEC filings, M&A due diligence, GTM/ICP account research | Valyu | valyu-cli skill |
| Research with deliverables (CSV/XLSX/PPTX/DOCX/PDF) | Valyu | valyu deepresearch create (valyu-cli skill) |
Availability check and fallbacks
Before routing, verify the chosen provider is usable (cheap checks, never print key values):
[ -n "$EXA_API_KEY" ] || grep -qs '^EXA_API_KEY=' ~/.config/elnora-websearch/.env # same pattern per provider
command -v tvly >/dev/null; command -v firecrawl >/dev/null; command -v valyu >/dev/nullKeys live in ~/.config/elnora-websearch/.env (%USERPROFILE%\.config\elnora-websearch\.env on Windows); process env wins over the file. If the first-choice provider isn't configured, fall back in this order:
- Semantic search (Exa missing) → Tavily search → Perplexity search-grounded answer
- General search / extract (Tavily missing) → Tavily works keyless at fair-use volume, so try it anyway → Firecrawl (also has a keyless mode) → Exa
- Cited answer (Perplexity missing) → Exa answer-style search + you synthesize → Tavily
- Scrape/crawl (Firecrawl missing) → Tavily extract/crawl → Firecrawl keyless for low volume
- Academic/financial (Valyu missing) → Exa (papers, filings via neural search) → Perplexity deep research
If nothing is configured at all: Tavily and Firecrawl still work keyless for basic search/extract; for anything more, point the user at /websearch-setup.
Choosing between providers
Exa finds things by meaning (best discovery); Tavily is the pragmatic all-rounder with the strongest recurring free tier and first-party extract/crawl/map; Perplexity doesn't return links, it returns an answer with citations (best when the user wants a conclusion, not a reading list); Firecrawl turns hostile or JS-heavy pages into clean markdown and handles crawling, interaction, and monitoring; Valyu covers corpora the open web doesn't (SEC filings, clinical trials, patents, licensed academic content) and produces file deliverables. Prefer the cheapest adequate tool: a keyless Tavily search beats spending Valyu credits on a general question; one Firecrawl scrape beats a full crawl.
| Provider | Free tier | Card? | Keyless mode |
| Exa | $10 credits on signup (~1,000 searches); +$7/month with payment method on file | No | No |
| Tavily | 1,000 credits/month, recurring | No | Yes (search + extract, fair-use) |
| Perplexity | None — prepaid credits; nothing charged until you buy | Yes | No |
| Firecrawl | 1,000 credits/month, recurring | No | Yes (search/scrape, low volume) |
| Valyu | $10 credits on signup ($20 with work email) | No | No |
Conflict arbitration
Firecrawl's umbrella skill claims all web tasks ("replaces WebFetch and WebSearch"). In this multi-provider bundle, this router is the arbiter: when several providers could serve a request, route by the table above, preferring the cheapest adequate tool — do not let Firecrawl's self-description win by default. Firecrawl gets the job when the task actually needs its strengths (JS rendering, anti-bot, site crawling, interaction, monitoring). Never suggest firecrawl setup defaults unless the user explicitly wants Firecrawl to own every web operation.
Not set up yet?
If no provider is configured, run /websearch-setup — it walks through key signup (four of five free tiers need no credit card), installs each vendor's official CLI and skills, and verifies with smoke tests. /websearch-status shows current health; /websearch-update keeps everything on the latest official releases.
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