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Ptah Documentation

Web search

Web search

Section titled “Web search”

Ptah exposes a WebSearch tool to agents so they can ground answers in live web results. You pick one of three search providers — Tavily, Serper, or Exa — and supply an API key.

What you need

Section titled “What you need”
  • An API key from one of:
    • Tavily — tavily.com (recommended default, generous free tier).
    • Serper — serper.dev (Google-backed results, fast).
    • Exa — exa.ai (neural search, high-quality long-form results).

Configuration

Section titled “Configuration”

Each provider is configured the same way:

  1. Open Settings → Web Search.
  2. Pick the provider.
  3. Paste your API key. It’s stored in encrypted safeStorage under ptah.webSearch.apiKey.<provider>.
  4. Click Test to run a sample query end-to-end.

You can store keys for multiple providers. Only one is active at a time — change the active provider from the same settings page at any moment.

Verifying it works

Section titled “Verifying it works”
  1. Open the chat.
  2. Ask: Search the web for the latest Claude Sonnet release notes and summarize the top change.
  3. The agent should call the WebSearch tool. In the Execution Tree, you’ll see a tool call node with the provider’s name and the returned URLs.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”
  • 401 Unauthorized — wrong or revoked key. Regenerate in the provider’s dashboard.
  • Empty results on valid queries — Tavily’s free tier rate-limits aggressively. Check the provider dashboard for quota. Serper and Exa have different quotas — switching providers often resolves it.
  • Tool not used — models sometimes answer from memory. Tell the model explicitly to use web search, or raise the effort level.
  • SSL / proxy errors — if you’re on a corporate network with SSL inspection, add your CA bundle to the system trust store. Ptah uses the OS trust store on all platforms.