Web search & fetch

Both tools are off by default, for the same reason: they turn something the model said into a request from your machine.

Searching the web100×30 · 0:29

Off by default; on, the query really goes to DuckDuckGo (or your SearXNG) and the results come back as a tool result you can read.

Search

Turn it on with /websearch, or web_search = true. koda tells you which backend is active.

There are two, chosen automatically:

Backend	When it is used	What it means
SearXNG	searx_url is set	Your own instance. Private, self-hosted, no third party sees the query.
DuckDuckGo	Otherwise	The keyless HTML endpoint, so search works out of the box with nothing to host.

web_search = true
searx_url = "http://localhost:8888"   # optional; omit to use DuckDuckGo
search_backend = "duckduckgo"          # duckduckgo | searxng
search_results = 6

A SearXNG instance needs json in search.formats in its settings.yml, or koda cannot read the results.

You can also pick the backend explicitly in /settings: enable web search, choose DuckDuckGo or SearXNG (entering the instance address inline), then close to confirm.

Fetching a page

With web_fetch on — off by default, toggled in /settings — the agent can GET a URL and read it as plain text. HTML is stripped and the output is capped at max_tool_output_bytes.

It is the companion to search: search finds a page, web_fetch reads it. Only http and https are accepted.

Fetched content is untrusted

Anything the agent reads from the web is data, not instructions. koda tells the model as much, but a page that tries to instruct the agent is a real thing, and the reason this tool is opt-in.

When a fetch comes back empty

A plain GET is enough for a documentation page and useless for anything that renders client-side — you get an empty shell, a spinner, or a cookie wall.

When web_fetch returns almost no text, koda adds a note saying the page probably renders with JavaScript and points at the browse tool, or at the setting if the browser is off. Without that note a near-empty page looks like a real one that happens to be short, and the model reasons about the wrong thing.

See Browsing live pages for the browser.