Skip to content
Kward

Web search

Use web search when the answer depends on current or external information:

  • current framework or dependency docs,
  • release notes and migration guides,
  • security advisories,
  • pricing or provider pages,
  • bug reports and issue discussions,
  • a specific URL you want Kward to inspect.

Example prompts:

Check the current Rails release notes and summarize migration risks for this project.
Find the official OpenRouter docs for model configuration.
Check whether this dependency has a recent security advisory.
Read this URL and explain the setup steps: https://example.com/docs

How Kward researches

Kward has three web tools:

  1. web_search finds candidate sources.
  2. fetch_content reads human-readable pages.
  3. fetch_raw reads machine-readable files such as JSON, YAML, XML, RSS, OpenAPI specs, or plain text.

A good research flow is:

Search for the official docs, fetch the relevant page, then answer with the source URL.

Kward should search first, then fetch important pages before relying on them.

Network behavior

Web tools are advertised to the model by default. Queries and fetched URLs are sent over the network to the selected provider or target host. See Configuration for the full web_search config reference including API key storage and the provider config setting.

In automatic mode, provider fallback is:

  1. Exa API when EXA_API_KEY is configured, otherwise keyless Exa MCP.
  2. Perplexity API when PERPLEXITY_API_KEY is configured and model-provider fallback is allowed.
  3. Gemini API with Google Search grounding when GEMINI_API_KEY is configured and model-provider fallback is allowed.
  4. DuckDuckGo HTML search, then bundled public SearXNG instances.

You do not need an API key for basic web search, but keys can improve limits or provider choice. The default provider can also be set in config as web_search.provider; the tool argument overrides it for a single call.

Search output is capped at 8 KB total, with excerpts up to 300 characters and answer text up to 2,000 characters. HTTP requests use a 10-second timeout.

Disable web tools

Hide all web tools:

{
  "web_search": {
    "enabled": false
  }
}

Use this when working on private projects where no prompt should trigger external lookup.

Tool details

web_search

Finds candidate sources. Arguments:

  • queries: one to four search strings.
  • max_results: results per query, default 5, capped at 20.
  • provider: optional auto, exa, perplexity, gemini, or duckduckgo.
  • recency_filter: optional day, week, month, or year.
  • domain_filter: optional domains to include, or domains prefixed with - to exclude.

fetch_content

Reads a specific HTTP or HTTPS page and extracts readable text. Use it for docs pages, articles, issues, and release notes.

Arguments:

  • url
  • max_bytes: default 16384, capped at 131072.
  • extract: optional auto, text, or markdown.

In auto mode (default), Kward detects HTML content and extracts readable text while stripping scripts, styles, navigation prose, and forms. It preserves headings, paragraphs, ordered and unordered lists, code blocks, blockquotes, simple tables, and inline link destinations. A bounded Links section lists discovered main-content and navigation destinations so an agent can continue through a site without raw HTML. Relative links are resolved against the final fetched URL. Non-HTML content is returned as cleaned text. Use markdown to retain Markdown structure, or text for plain text with link destinations in parentheses.

Kward downloads and parses up to 2 MB of a page before applying max_bytes to the extracted result. This lets pages with large scripts or metadata before their main content remain readable while keeping model-facing output bounded. Responses above the download limit are rejected rather than parsed as incomplete HTML.

Fetches follow up to 5 redirects and use a 10-second HTTP timeout.

fetch_raw

Reads a specific HTTP or HTTPS resource without readability extraction. Use it for JSON, YAML, XML, RSS, OpenAPI specs, and plain text.

Arguments:

  • url
  • max_bytes: default 16384, capped at 131072.
  • accept: optional HTTP Accept header.

Fetches follow up to 5 redirects, enforce the requested byte limit while reading the response, and use a 10-second HTTP timeout.