Research

Match the evidence workflow to the question:

• Lookup: open the relevant primary source, verify the requested fact and cite it with its access date. No report file, credit ledger or graph is required.
• Synthesis or report: compare the relevant sources, distinguish evidence from inference and name unresolved disagreements. For a requested durable report or consequential research, use reporting.md.
• High stakes: use current primary evidence and proportionate independent review. Never convert missing evidence into a confident conclusion.

Reuse repository material when it already answers the question. A number from a local check does not require web research. Verify volatile external values at the source; record when they were accessed. Treat snippets and agent summaries as leads, not as sources already read.

For generic web discovery and public-page reading, call the configured Scrapinho MCP tools directly: search.web with explicit input.engine: "duckduckgo", and fetch.page. Do not run acquisition/preflight scripts or build a REST client. The active harness owns MCP authentication; a working MCP connection does not require a separate SCRAPINHO_API_KEY environment check. Require a project scope and a stable request/idempotency key per acquisition; never share scope between unrelated projects. Save durable evidence with the host's file-writing tools as described in reporting.md.

Start with scraper_capabilities to check authentication and the requested operation, then use scraper_submit, scraper_get and scraper_read_source. Read the exposed tool schema for required fields and defaults; set one attempt and bounded limits. Do not infer geography from language or domains: web search currently has fixed pt-BR/BR locale. An unsupported geographic override must fail rather than silently change. A missing MCP connection or capability is a blocker for this route, not permission to substitute scripts or the removed generic scraper. Stop on auth, quota, CAPTCHA, 403 or 429; do not retry acquisition or switch proxies to bypass refusal.

Poll the admitted job without submitting it again. Read sources through next_cursor=null; partial sources are not complete evidence. Use scraper_read_search for structured search results. Verify raw SHA-256 only when raw bytes are actually exported; text read over MCP is not a raw export. Web search supports pages 0 and 1; request page 1 explicitly only when page 0 reports it. Keep the effective engine across pages. Preserve each query/page's original positions and provenance; deduplicate URLs only when selecting pages to open, not by rewriting the ranked snapshots. Snippets and missing publication dates must not become verified claims or invented dates.

Scrapinho also exposes news.search, search.suggestions, trends.now and trends.suggestions when capabilities report them available. Read their JSON through EOF before parsing. News links may be aggregators: open the primary article before citing it. These operations do not substitute for Maps, social, ads, YouTube, trends.interest, or scientific indexes. Preserve the installed scrapingdog route for specialized methods without verified parity, then Firecrawl and host tools after a disclosed bounded failure or missing key. For papers, start with the free Firecrawl Research Index when available; use paper-search to cross-check metadata when needed. Missing optional specialized providers do not block adequately sourced local work.

When a collection explicitly requests Webshare, use the installed webshare-fetch URL [--config PATH] [--timeout SECONDS] helper rather than building a proxy request in the skill. Keep the existing priority intact: Scrapinho remains the first choice for generic discovery and public URLs; ScrapingDog remains only for specialized methods without verified parity. Webshare requires explicit selection for a separate collection, never an automatic fallback from Scrapinho or a bypass after refusal. Never proxy cookies or OAuth traffic. Keep WEBSHARE_API_KEY in the environment and its private config outside the repository.

Convert documents only when needed to extract their content. Verify reading order and tables. Do not package a whole repository to inspect a known file.

Delegate collection only when independent source work would materially help. Give collectors narrow questions and return paths or URLs; inspect the sources before accepting claims. Collection alone does not require an Agent Graph.

Report what is established, what is inference and what remains unverified. A small or uncontrolled sample does not establish a general productivity claim.

Adapted from research-stack, MIT License.