Web Research

Web Research

Research a question across several sources, verify the claims, and return a short, cited answer.

When to use

• A decision needs facts you don't already have.
• You need current information beyond what's in memory.

Tools

Discovery and retrieval are separate steps with separate tools:

• web_search finds sources — it returns titles, URLs, domains, dates and short snippets. Each call spends the company's search budget and the budget is capped per day, so search once with a good phrase rather than repeatedly with variations.
• web_fetch reads one page you already have a URL for. Snippets are previews, not the page.

Steps

1. Frame the question and what a good answer looks like.
2. Search with web_search to gather several independent sources.
3. Read the primary sources with web_fetch — not just the snippets.
4. Verify — corroborate each key claim across two sources.
5. Synthesize a short answer; cite every claim with a URL you actually saw in a web_search result or fetched.

If search is unavailable

web_search may be absent (this company has not granted it) or may refuse because the daily budget is spent. Either way:

• Say so, plainly, in your answer. "I could not search the web" is a complete and useful sentence.
• Work from URLs the operator supplied, reading them with web_fetch.
• Never fabricate a citation. Do not write a URL you have not seen returned by a tool, and do not attribute a claim to a source you did not read. An unverified answer that says it is unverified is worth far more than a confident one with invented links.

Output

A concise summary, a bullet list of findings with links, and an explicit note on anything that could not be verified.