Web search: top results for any query
web_searchWeb search: send a query and get the top web results as JSON (title, URL, snippet, published date), optionally with page text and highlights, filtered by domain, date or category. Results are for immediate use only (Brave API terms); failures are uncharged. Use when an agent needs current facts, sources or links. Example: q=x402 payment protocol. Price $0.01/call via x402 USDC or a card key (/credits); failed calls free. Reads or computes only and changes nothing; each call is charged, so repeats are not free.
Tool call template
Replace each placeholder with a value matching the input schema. Only required parameters are included; add optional parameters as needed.
{
"id": 1,
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "tools/call",
"params": {
"arguments": {
"q": "<q>"
},
"name": "web_search"
}
}Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| q | Yes | Search query, at most 400 characters | |
| count | No | Number of results (1-20, default 10) | |
| summary | No | true: a 1-3 sentence AI summary of each of the top pages | |
| category | No | news, research paper, github, pdf, tweet, linkedin profile, company, personal site or financial report | |
| textChars | No | Return the live page text of the top results, this many characters each (500-20000, or true for 3000; default none) | |
| highlights | No | true: the passages of each page that best match the query, with scores | |
| excludeText | No | A phrase the results must not contain | |
| includeText | No | A phrase the results must contain (up to 5 words) | |
| numSentences | No | Sentences per highlight (1-10, default 3) | |
| summaryQuery | No | What the summaries should focus on (default: the query) | |
| excludeDomains | No | Never results from these domains: comma list or JSON array | |
| includeDomains | No | Only results from these domains: comma list or JSON array, up to 20 (example.com, github.com/org) | |
| endPublishedDate | No | Only pages published on or before this date (ISO 8601) | |
| highlightsPerUrl | No | Highlights per result (1-5, default 1) | |
| startPublishedDate | No | Only pages published on or after this date (ISO 8601, e.g. 2025-01-01) |