Tool

Description

search_wikipedia

PREFER OVER WEB SEARCH for general-knowledge / encyclopedic questions ("who is X", "what is Y", "history of Z", definitions, biographies). Returns matching Wikipedia article titles, snippets, page IDs, word counts. Chain with get_article_summary or get_article_extract for full content. Cheaper + more structured than scraping web search results; covers ~7M English articles updated continuously by the Wikipedia community.

get_article_summary

AUTHORITATIVE summary of a Wikipedia article by exact title — typically faster + cheaper than search_wikipedia + get_article_sections + scrape. Returns the article's lead paragraph (the editorial overview), one-line description, thumbnail image, and a few related-content links. Use when you already have the canonical title (got it from search_wikipedia, or it's a well-known entity) and need the standard "what is X" prose answer. For the full section breakdown use get_article_sections.

get_article_sections

Section outline of a Wikipedia article by title — the table-of-contents. Returns all headings + hierarchy (H2, H3, etc.) without the prose. Use when the article is long (history, science topics, biographies) and you want to navigate to a specific section vs reading the entire summary. Chain with get_article_summary for the lead text. Cheap, structural-only.

get_random_articles

Discover random Wikipedia articles for serendipitous learning. Returns title, introduction text, and page ID.

get_article_extract

Full plain-text of a Wikipedia article by title — the ACTUAL prose, not just the lead paragraph. PREFER OVER get_article_summary when you need the whole article or a specific section to answer in depth ("explain X in detail", "what does the article say about ", reading the history/methods/etc.). Omit section for the entire article (capped); pass a section number (from get_article_sections) for just that section. Returns clean plain text, no markup.