Web Search

Real-time web search with citations

Overview

Enable your AI to search the web in real-time and provide answers with inline citations. The tool supports multiple queries per request for comprehensive research.

AI searching the web and returning results with citations

Quick Start

Enable web search in chat.config.ts:

ai: {
  tools: {
    webSearch: {
      enabled: true, // Requires TAVILY_API_KEY or FIRECRAWL_API_KEY
    },
  },
}

Environment Variables

Configure one of the supported search providers:

# Option 1: Tavily (recommended)
TAVILY_API_KEY=your_tavily_key

# Option 2: Firecrawl
FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=your_firecrawl_key

Providers

Provider	Best For	Features
Tavily	General search	Topic filtering, news mode, domain exclusions
Firecrawl	Content extraction	High-quality markdown from web pages

Tavily

Default provider with search-specific optimizations:

Topics: general or news (news limits to last 7 days)
Search depth: basic or advanced
Domain filtering: Exclude specific domains from results

Firecrawl

Alternative provider focused on content quality. Returns clean markdown extracted from pages.

Features

Multi-Query Search

The tool accepts up to 2 queries per request, executed in parallel:

{
  search_queries: [
    { query: "latest AI developments 2024", maxResults: 5 },
    { query: "machine learning trends", maxResults: 5 },
  ]
}

Results are automatically deduplicated by domain and URL.

Inline Citations

Search results are displayed as collapsible source cards. The AI is instructed to cite sources inline when using retrieved information.

Progress Indicators

While searching, the UI shows:

Search status (running/completed)
Query text being executed
Number of sources found

Tool Output

Returns search results grouped by query:

{
  searches: [
    {
      query: { query: "...", maxResults: 5 },
      results: [{ url: "...", title: "...", content: "..." }],
    },
  ]
}

UI States

State	Shows
`input-available`	Progress indicator with query
`output-available`	Collapsible source cards with titles and URLs

Customization

Tool Definition

The tool is defined in lib/ai/tools/web-search.ts. You can modify:

Maximum queries per request (MAX_SEARCH_QUERIES)
Default results per query (DEFAULT_MAX_RESULTS)
Tool description to adjust AI behavior

Provider Selection

To use Firecrawl instead of Tavily for regular chat, modify lib/ai/tools/tools.ts:

webSearch: firecrawlWebSearch({
  dataStream,
  writeTopLevelUpdates: true,
  costAccumulator,
}),

URL Retrieval

A separate retrieveUrl tool is available for fetching structured content from specific URLs (as opposed to searching the web). This tool uses Firecrawl to extract clean markdown from any webpage.

Enable in chat.config.ts:

ai: {
  tools: {
    urlRetrieval: {
      enabled: true, // Requires FIRECRAWL_API_KEY
    },
  },
}

The tool extracts:

Page title and description
Clean markdown content
Source URL and language metadata

Use web search for discovery and URL retrieval for extracting content from known URLs.