Web Search Plus developer resources

Picks a good provider

News, research, shopping and technical searches do not all need the same search service.

Tries another when needed

Missing key, provider problem or empty result? It can move to the next option instead of stopping the whole task.

Shows its work

You keep the original sources and can ask for extra details about which provider ran, what failed and how long it took.

The best fit for OpenClaw. Version 4.0.3 matches Hermes: search, clean page reading, and provider settings. Local search uses separately installed DonSeTch instead of Hound. The extra tools stay off until you allow them. Needs OpenClaw 2026.8.1.

stable · native OpenClaw plugin

Search and read pages inside Hermes. Version 4.1.1 keeps Exa highlights, Parallel result and domain filters, and Tavily recency on the values that were actually sent. Optional native WSP routing stays. DonSeTch 3.6.1 is supported as a separately installed provider.

Adds the Web Search Plus command-line tool to NanoClaw containers. No MCP server is required.

Use Web Search Plus in Claude Desktop, Cursor, NanoBot and other MCP apps. Version 4.1.1 matches the Hermes adapter fidelity. Your existing web_search and web_extract tools and setup stay the same. The optional native Hermes adapter is not part of this package.

A portable source-only Web Search Plus skill for OpenClaw installs that do not use the native plugin. Perplexity/Kilo answers are gone. Not a copy of plugin 4.0.3.

stable compatibility option · ClawHub latest

Exa search prefers requested highlights. Parallel Search sends result count and domain filters through advanced_settings instead of rewriting the query. Tavily recency uses native time_range; time_range wins over freshness; receipts match the filter that was sent. Hermes → · PyPI →

Hermes 4.1.0 adds an opt-in wsp backend so native web_search and web_extract can call the existing WSP engine in-process. Plus tools stay the default; install does not select the backend. The native path is Hermes-only — MCP 4.1.0 carries the same DonSeTch 3.6.1 adapter update (compact evidence, namespaced diagnostics, stdio-only child transport) without native backend registration. DonSeTch remains separately installed AGPL-3.0-only and explicit-only. Historical Hound / Master-Fetch credit stays with Bishesh Bhandari (@dondai1234). Hermes → · PyPI →

The portable skill drops Perplexity/Kilo answer synthesis. Ranked source URLs and extracted page text only. Not a copy of plugin 4.0.3 — DonSeTch, Parallel, Octen and TinyFish stay on the native plugin. Release notes → · ClawHub →

The native OpenClaw plugin now matches Hermes 4.0.3. Hound is removed; install DonSeTch separately and point donsetchBin at an absolute path. Octen and TinyFish stay explicit-only. Parallel can join automatic routing. Floor is OpenClaw 2026.8.1. Release notes → · ClawHub →

The tested DonSeTch binary is now 3.2.1. Live stdio Search and Fetch still work; 2.x binaries report incompatible_major. DonSeTch remains separately installed and explicit-only. Parallel routing from 4.0.2 is unchanged. Hermes → · PyPI →

Parallel Search now defaults to fast. When a PARALLEL_API_KEY is configured, Parallel joins automatic routing; set auto_allow.parallel=false to keep it explicit. Use advanced or research mode for deeper work. Parallel remains high-risk under its standard Customer Terms. Hermes → · PyPI →

The optional Hound sidecar is gone. Hermes and the standalone MCP package now use a separately installed DonSeTch 2.1.0 stdio provider through DONSETCH_BIN. It stays explicit-only by default; browser and anti-bot outcomes remain host-dependent. Hermes → · PyPI →

The standalone package now ships portable Agent Plugins 1.0-compatible plugin.json and mcp.json manifests. Clients can start the published server through an exact uvx pin while the stable web_search and web_extract tools remain unchanged. PyPI → · Release notes →

Long source summaries keep the stable 500-character compatibility preview, but now carry an explicit truncation marker showing the original content length. The fix makes bounded output honest without changing short-summary behavior or the public tool contract. Release notes →

Exa now turns day, week, month and year freshness requests into concrete publication-date bounds while preserving explicit date overrides. TinyFish joins as an explicit-only, BYOK source-search provider and never enters automatic routing. Its standard Terms permit broad Customer Data uses, including training-related uses, so WSP rates it high risk and links the warning beside setup guidance. Exa freshness contribution: @kesku. Release notes →

The standalone package carries the same Exa freshness and explicit-only TinyFish support while preserving exactly two MCP tools, 15 Search providers and 9 Extract providers. TinyFish still requires your own key and the same high-risk Terms review. PyPI → · Release notes →

An optional source-search provider you call explicitly with provider="octen". Octen supplies ranked source results and highlights; Monid provides API access and billing through MONID_API_KEY. Native recency and domain filters are supported, full-content and answer modes stay outside the integration, and Octen never enters automatic routing unless an operator deliberately opts it in. Release notes →

The OpenClaw plugin completes the source-only port and joins the rest of Web Search Plus on the 3.3.0 line. Two new tools ship with it: web_search_health_plus, a read-only view of in-process provider health, and web_extract_benchmark_plus, an explicit-only extraction benchmark capped at three provider calls. Per-call routing_override_provider now pins exactly one provider with no silent fallback, extraction stays inside operator ceilings with page-on-demand full text through content_ref, and Hound can be connected as an optional loopback-only sidecar. Compatibility note: Perplexity direct and the Kilo Perplexity gateway are gone from the provider schema, runtime and config — they are not source-only evidence providers. Release notes →

Bounded heading-aware extraction spans retain the body beneath a matching heading; provenance-safe result enrichment preserves contributing observations and adds explainable fetch hints; completion-order Research can stop after a conservative diversity quorum while preempted providers remain visible. The interaction ideas are independently adapted from Hound / Master-Fetch v11.2.0, the MIT-licensed project by Bishesh Bhandari (@dondai1234). Hound code is not bundled or claimed as Robby's code.

The standalone package realigns from 1.2.0 to the portable WSP 3.3 engine version without breaking its two MCP tools. It carries the same semantic spans, provenance-safe enrichment, Research quorum and repaired quality_report projection, with Hound still connected only as a separately installed sidecar.

Optional local Search + Extract through Hound 11.1.6, connected as a loopback-only MCP sidecar. Hound stays separately installed and explicit-only by default; WSP retains source-only output, SSRF checks, bounded context, cache ownership and truthful provider receipts. Credit: Hound / Master Fetch, created by Bishesh Bhandari (@dondai1234).

The standalone package tracks the portable WSP 3.2 engine: 13 Search and 9 Extract providers, Hound sidecar support, explicit MCP/httpx dependency floors, packaged setup guidance and truthful provider identity on fresh cache hits.

Patch release for two Provider SDK integration defects found in post-release review. Extraction requests served by SDK-discovered providers no longer fail closed inside the extraction-cache identity: they contribute a deterministic identity derived from their spec and the non-secret scalar settings of their config section, while unknown, unregistered providers still fail closed. And the providers.d non-production gate now acts before module execution — fixtures declaring production=False are skipped without being imported unless the explicit opt-in is set. No behavioural changes for built-in providers or any search path; existing caches remain valid. Release notes →

The standalone MCP package syncs the portable Web Search Plus v3.1.1 engine: budget preflight, diversity scoring, self-hosted profiles, shadow-policy observations, semantic extraction spans, the versioned extraction-cache identity, and the public wsp_sdk with fail-closed providers.d discovery — while keeping the stable two-tool MCP boundary. v1.0.1 before it fixed auto-request fallback in the MCP projection. Release notes →

WSP 3.1 ships everything 3.0 deferred, plus the quality and budget layers around it — every feature opt-in, defaults functionally unchanged. A deterministic shadow routing policy now runs beside Classic Routing v2, persists its would-be decisions (never query text) and reports agreement and provider divergences in the read-only Operator Console; Classic remains authoritative and WSP_ROUTING_CLASSIC_ONLY=1 still wins. Budget preflight checks provider-call caps, daily quota, timeout and context budgets before the first provider call and degrades deterministically or aborts with a typed error. Quality reports gain a diversity diagnosis (registrable-domain coverage, canonical-URL duplication, near-duplicate content, provider mix). The extraction cache gets a versioned, request-exact identity contract — no wrong hits after endpoint, budget or extraction-config changes. A self-hosted profile runs automatic routing on SearXNG and keyless Keenable without commercial keys. Opt-in semantic spans return query-conditioned passages under a mechanical offset contract (NFC, Unicode codepoints, half-open ranges). And the new provider SDK makes a provider one self-contained providers.d module with scaffolding and a conformance suite — zero core-file edits. New Console endpoint: per-provider daily health trends. v3.1.1 hardens SDK receipt provenance and test-state isolation, restores schema-generator parity, and removes wall-clock flakes from journal concurrency tests. Release notes →

WSP 3.0.2 hardens registered Search/Extract entrypoints, bounded Research fan-out, cache identity, immutable full-text references and timeout snapshots. Building on v3.0, Web Search Plus is a source-only evidence engine: frozen native v3 request/response contracts with v2 compatibility projections, lossless provider observations captured before filtering/dedup/rerank/truncation, typed provider errors with complete attempt history and truthful routing/cache receipts, deterministic bounded-context extraction with page-on-demand full-text storage, SQLite operational state (dry-run-first migration, verified backups, idempotent apply, digest-checked rollback), a local loopback-only, token-authenticated, read-only Operator Console, direct extraction benchmarking with privacy-safe aggregate history, Classic Routing v2 kill switches and Brave in the default auto-pool. Compatibility note: WSP 3.0 is mechanically source-only — the native Perplexity and Kilo-Perplexity answer endpoints are no longer registered; existing keys are ignored, not deleted. The public Hermes tools remain web_search_plus and web_extract_plus. Release notes →

Shared cache operations now preserve provider health, performance and usage telemetry, invalid UTF-8 foreign JSON no longer crashes stats or clear, and Parallel extraction gets a fair 60k-per-result default budget for long pages. Release notes →

Patch release for Hermes Agent v0.18 standalone plugin discovery: Web Search Plus now loads from outside the plugin directory without cwd-sensitive sibling imports, while v2.8 keeps truncate-and-store extraction, unified freshness filters and provider benchmarking.

Private/internal extraction target URLs are blocked before provider dispatch, keyless-provider setup is smoother, and setup.py fastpath checks whether current public Hermes is routed through Web Search Plus cleanly.

GroktoCrawl can be used as a local Firecrawl-compatible backend through the existing firecrawl.api_url and firecrawl.scrape_url overrides; no separate provider or default backend required.

Keenable joins the Hermes provider lineup for search and extraction. Use KEENABLE_API_KEY for authenticated calls; the keyless public endpoint is opt-in and disabled by default.

Config-driven provider gating now covers both search and extraction. Firecrawl and any other provider can be disabled centrally in config.json without touching release code.

Corrective routing release: normal provider=auto Search and Extract requests once again expand to multiple candidates and continue after quota or rate-limit failures. Explicit provider selections remain strict unless fallback is requested. The release adds boundary regressions that reproduce the former one-candidate plan and prove an executed second-provider fallback after a simulated 429. Release notes →

The standalone MCP package now tracks the portable Web Search Plus v3.0.2 source-only contract: canonical v3 evidence and receipts, truthful multi-provider Research, bounded extraction and immutable full-text references, cache provenance, typed failures, and a stable two-tool MCP boundary for web_search and web_extract. Release notes →

Feature sync with Web Search Plus v2.5–v2.9 for the standalone skill runtime: Keenable, freshness controls, news search, Serper extraction, locale routing, adaptive provider memory, stronger SSRF guards and long-page handling.

Feature sync with the current Web Search Plus engine: Keenable, freshness controls, news search, Serper extraction, locale routing, SSRF target guards, long-page handling and Parallel extraction budget tuning.

Native plugin release adds research mode, authority reranking, quality signals and retry jitter; ClawHub artifact verified and install-smoked through OpenClaw.

Dedicated NanoClaw front-end packages the shared engine as a self-contained wsp CLI skill for agent containers — search and extract, no MCP bridge required.