Web Search
When To Use
- Finding vendor documentation, standards, or official guides
- Comparisons and benchmarks across products or approaches
- News, release notes, and recent status for a technology
- Standalone searches; the
/tome:researchfan-out does not dispatch this channel yet, so invoketome:web-searchdirectly
When NOT To Use
- Code implementations (use
Skill(tome:code-search)) - Community opinions (use
Skill(tome:discourse)) - Academic literature (use
Skill(tome:papers))
Search the open web for pages about a topic. This is the general-knowledge channel: the pages no domain-specific channel targets.
Sources (Priority Order)
- You.com MCP server (
you-searchtool) when configured - WebSearch tool as fallback (no configuration needed)
The You.com MCP server is optional. Without it the channel runs entirely on the built-in WebSearch tool, so a session never fails because the server is absent.
Setup (Optional)
To prefer You.com results, add the MCP server to your Claude Code config once:
# Keyless free profile
claude mcp add you --transport http https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free
# Authenticated (higher rate limits; YDC_API_KEY from you.com)
claude mcp add you --transport http https://api.you.com/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $YDC_API_KEY"
A key is only needed for the authenticated endpoint. The free profile needs no key and no account.
Workflow
- Build search queries using
tome.channels.web.expand_web_queries() - Run each query through the You.com MCP
you-searchtool if the server is configured, otherwise through WebSearch - Parse results via
parse_you_mcp_result()(raisesValueErroron a response shape that is not a you-search envelope) orparse_websearch_result()(raisesValueErroron a result with no URL) - Rank via
rank_web_findings() - Return Finding objects
Failure Handling
- If the You.com MCP tool errors or is unreachable, retry the query through WebSearch and record the fallback in the query log so the report can show the channel ran degraded rather than ok
- If both paths fail for every query, report the failure explicitly rather than returning fabricated or empty findings
Exit Criteria
- [ ] At least one web search query built and executed for the requested topic, through You.com MCP or WebSearch
- [ ] Results parsed into Finding objects with title, URL, and a
relevance score, marked
channel="web" - [ ] Findings returned from
rank_web_findings()sorted by relevance score descending - [ ] If the You.com path failed and WebSearch was used, the fallback is reported rather than passed off as the primary source
- [ ] If no results are found for any query, this is reported explicitly rather than returning an empty list silently