# Web Search and Fetch (/agent/web)

Two tools let the agent go outside your project for information. Neither prompts - they read public
pages and change nothing on your machine.

| Tool | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| `web_search` | Search the web. Returns ranked results with title, URL, snippet, and publish date where available |
| `web_fetch` | Fetch a URL and return its readable text, with the source URL and title |

`web_fetch` returns extracted text, not raw HTML, and the output is bounded so one long page can't
consume the context window.

## When it helps [#when-it-helps]

- Checking a library's current API instead of relying on what the model recalls
- Reading an error message someone else has already hit
- Pulling the changelog for a dependency before upgrading it

A useful habit is to ask for the source: "check the docs for X and link what you used." You then get
a citation you can verify rather than a confident summary you can't.

<Callout type="info">
Web results are only as current as what the search returns, and a model will still summarize what it
reads. For anything load-bearing, follow the link.
</Callout>

## Errors [#errors]

A failed search or fetch comes back as an error the agent can see, prefixed so it isn't mistaken for
a successful empty result. That matters: a silent empty result would look like "nothing exists,"
which is a very different conclusion from "the lookup failed."

## Going further with MCP [#going-further-with-mcp]

For anything beyond reading public pages - a private wiki, an internal search index, a browser that
holds a login - add an [MCP server](/agent/mcp). The built-in tools deliberately stay simple.