Answer a Question
answerGenerates a cited, prose answer to a natural-language question from fresh web results. Use it for synthesized answers; choose brief snippet-based or report depth with page reads and multiple searches.
Instructions
Answer a question in prose, grounded in fresh web results, with citations.
This is the most expensive operation this server offers. One call runs a fixed set of searches, may read several pages, and then makes one model call over what it retrieved -- so use it when you want a synthesised answer, and use search when you would rather read the sources yourself.
The answer is written by a model, from the retrieved material only. sources is not the model's list: it is built by the server from the results the prose actually cited, so a URL the model invented is not in it. Read the prose against sources -- every claim should be traceable to one of them -- and read notice, which says when it is not: an answer with no citations, or citations the server dropped because they named nothing it retrieved.
depth is the one cost knob you control. brief (the default) runs a single search and answers from snippets. report runs up to three searches and reads up to three pages first, which is slower and costs the operator several times as much. Retrieval is never driven by the model: the same queries always run, so an answer costs a bounded amount rather than whatever the model decides.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| depth | No | `brief` (the default) runs one search and answers from snippets. `report` runs up to three searches and reads up to three pages before answering, which costs the operator several times as much. This is the only cost knob you control. | |
| query | Yes | The question. Natural-language questions work well. | |
| recency | No | Restrict retrieval to pages published in the last day, week, month or year. A provider without a date filter says so in `notice` rather than pretending it filtered. | |
| language | No | The language retrieval should be in, as an ISO 639-1 code (`en`, `de`); a region is not this field's job and it does not take one. A provider with no language parameter says so in `notice` rather than pretending it filtered. | |
| provider | No | Pin retrieval to one backend, exactly as `search` does: that provider or an error. Omit to use the server's default, with its configured fallbacks. Not every provider is enabled on every deployment. | |
| safe_search | No | `true` asks each backend to filter adult content, `false` asks it not to; omitting it means the server does not override the provider's own default, which is not the same as unfiltered. A provider without the parameter says so in `notice`. | |
| extra_queries | No | Up to two more retrieval queries, run after `query`, for a question one phrasing would only partly cover. Used by `depth="report"`: a `brief` answer runs `query` alone. | |
| exclude_domains | No | Omit results from these domains. | |
| include_domains | No | Restrict retrieval to these domains, e.g. ["arxiv.org"]. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| depth | Yes | ||
| model | Yes | ||
| query | Yes | ||
| answer | Yes | ||
| notice | No | ||
| fetched | Yes | ||
| sources | Yes | ||
| searches | Yes | ||
| truncated | No | ||
| retrieved_at | No |