mcpField
P
pi-web-search

pi-web-search

github.com/davidondrejProductivity4.2k200 installsUpdated today
Repository

About pi-web-search

pi-web-search is a skill for web and code research, with content fetching and citation-bearing search results. It documents a required non-interactive search setting and fallback search providers.

Key features

  1. 01Web search with citations
  2. 02Exa code-context search
  3. 03Fetch pages, PDFs, GitHub, and video
  4. 04Retrieve full truncated search content

Use cases

  1. 01Research topics across web sources
  2. 02Look up library and API code context
  3. 03Extract text from PDFs or video transcripts

MCP support

The skill describes web search as using Exa MCP, with fallback providers Exa, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Install

Copy the command and run it in a terminal.

$npx skills add https://github.com/davidondrej/skills --skill pi-web-search

After installing, type/pi-web-searchin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.

Details

From the project README

Web Search

The pi-web-access package is installed globally. Zero-config via Exa MCP (no API key), with fallback Exa → Perplexity → Gemini.

CRITICAL: always pass workflow: "none"

Every web_search call MUST include workflow: "none". This skips the interactive browser curator popup (the user does not want it opening). No exceptions — single query or batched queries, always set workflow: "none".

web_search({ queries: ["query 1", "query 2"], workflow: "none" })

Tools

  • web_search — search the web; returns synthesized answers with citations. Can be called many times per turn. Always pass workflow: "none".
  • code_search — zero-key Exa code-context. Use for library/API/code lookups instead of generic web_search.
  • fetch_content — fetch URL(s) → markdown; handles PDFs, YouTube, GitHub.
  • get_search_content — big pages (>30k chars) are truncated in responses but stored in full; call this to pull the rest on demand so they don't blow context.

fetch_content specifics

  • GitHub URLs are cloned, not scraped — you get real files + a local path to explore with read/bash (private repos need the gh CLI). Use this for dev work.
  • PDFs → auto-extracted to markdown in ~/Downloads/, readable in sections (text-only, no OCR).
  • YouTube/video → full raw transcripts + frame extraction. Needs a GEMINI_API_KEY (not zero-config); frame extraction also needs ffmpeg/yt-dlp.

Routing — match the user's phrasing

Always use the web_search tool. These counts are HARD MINIMUMS — count your queries before answering and do not stop short:

  • "web search" → at least 2 queries, varied keywords/angles, then synthesize.
  • "extensive web research" → at least 4 queries, totally different keywords and angles.
  • "deep research" → at least 8 queries, totally different keywords and angles, run across 2–3 successive batches (refine angles after each batch), to learn as much as possible about the topic.

A single batched web_search call counts each query in queries[] toward the total. If your first batch is under the minimum, fire another batch before synthesizing.

Ranked results with URLs — DeepAPI web search

web_search returns synthesized answers. When you need the ranked source list itself — URLs to cite, compare, or scrape — use DeepAPI instead. Also the path to take if the Exa → Perplexity → Gemini chain fails.

[ -n "$DEEPAPI_API_KEY" ] || . ~/.deepapi/env
curl -s --max-time 60 "https://deepapi.co/v1/search/web" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DEEPAPI_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)" \
  -d '{"query": "your search terms", "maxResults": 5, "maxCostUsd": "0.05"}'

Results are in .output (title, url, snippet per item). Query under 500 chars. Full details: deepapi skill.

Comments

Markdown supported