web-search-plus-plugin-v2

Native OpenClaw plugin for one clean set of web tools.

Current version: 3.1.0

It registers:

web_search_plus — Routing v2 intelligent multi-provider web search with research mode and canonical-source reranking
web_extract_plus — Tavily-first URL extraction across supported providers
web_routing_config_plus — in-memory runtime routing preferences manager

web_answer_plus is removed in v3.0.0. Use search plus extraction; fewer tools, less mush.

Install

openclaw plugins install clawhub:web-search-plus-plugin-v2

ClawHub: https://clawhub.ai/plugins/web-search-plus-plugin-v2 Source: https://github.com/robbyczgw-cla/web-search-plus-plugin

Quick setup

You only need one provider configured to start. The recommended starter stack is:

You.com for fast snippets / factual queries
Serper for Google-style local, shopping, and community search
Linkup for source-grounded search and citations

Onboarding CLI:

web-search-plus-setup status --config ./web-search-plus-plugin.config.json
web-search-plus-setup list providers
web-search-plus-setup list presets
web-search-plus-setup setup --preset starter --config ./web-search-plus-plugin.config.json
web-search-plus-setup config --config ./web-search-plus-plugin.config.json --set routingConfigPath=memory:default

Runtime credentials still come from explicit OpenClaw plugin config fields. The CLI writes a JSON helper file for setup/onboarding, not runtime secret discovery.

Provider coverage

Search providers

Serper — Google-style web/news/shopping/local
Brave — broad current web and fallback; guarded in auto routing
Tavily — research-oriented search
Exa — semantic discovery, similar-page, docs/API, arXiv, deep search
Querit — multilingual/current AI search; guarded in auto routing
Linkup — citation/source-grounded search
Firecrawl — search with scrape-friendly metadata and vendor/source pages
Parallel — search and extraction; guarded in auto routing
SerpBase — Google-style alternate search; guarded in auto routing
Perplexity — direct answer-style web results via https://api.perplexity.ai/chat/completions; guarded in auto routing
Kilo Perplexity — gateway route via https://api.kilo.ai/api/gateway/chat/completions; guarded in auto routing
You.com — current web / RAG-style snippets
SearXNG — self-hosted metasearch

Extraction providers

Auto fallback order:

Tavily
Exa
Linkup
Parallel
Firecrawl
You.com

Tavily is the default first call because it was the fastest reliable benchmark head; Firecrawl stays the robust scraper safety net.

Configuration

Use explicit OpenClaw plugin config fields. The runtime uses only plugin config fields for credentials.

Search provider fields

serperApiKey
braveApiKey
tavilyApiKey
exaApiKey
queritApiKey
linkupApiKey
firecrawlApiKey
parallelApiKey
serpbaseApiKey
perplexityApiKey
kilocodeApiKey
youApiKey
searxngInstanceUrl

Extra fields

braveSafesearch
searxngAllowPrivate
routingConfigPath — optional namespace for in-memory routing preferences

Example:

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "web-search-plus-plugin-v2": {
        "config": {
          "youApiKey": "...",
          "serperApiKey": "...",
          "linkupApiKey": "..."
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Routing v2

web_search_plus(provider="auto") uses class-aware benchmarked routing. Diagnostics expose language_hint, routing_class, and routing_policy on every response.

Classes:

multilingual/current → Querit/Brave when allowed
local/shopping → Serper
docs/api → Exa/Firecrawl
academic/arxiv → Exa
community/reddit → Serper/Brave
security/cve → Firecrawl for vendor/source pages
official/vendor-release → You.com/Linkup for vendor announcements (Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, …)
official/regulatory → Linkup
finance/IR → Linkup/Tavily
weather/factual → You.com snippet-first
oss-discovery → Exa similar-page discovery
answer/synthesis → flags answer_mode_recommended; it does not resurrect web_answer_plus

Default conservative auto pool: You.com, Serper, Exa, Firecrawl, Tavily, Linkup. Guarded providers require auto_allow=true in routing preferences: Brave, SerpBase, Querit, Parallel, Perplexity, Kilo Perplexity.

Pass quality_report: true to receive routing scores, result-quality hints, fallback-chain diagnostics, and authority_signals (canonical domain hits, demoted domain hits, and whether the top result is a primary source) for canonical-source routing classes.

Canonical-source reranking

For routing classes where source authority beats snippet luck (official/vendor-release, docs/api, official/regulatory, finance/IR, security/cve), auto-routed results are reranked so primary sources (vendor blogs, official docs, regulators, IR pages, NVD/CVE records) outrank mirrors like YouTube, Medium, or Reddit. When the order changes, metadata.intent_rerank reports the routing class and the top domain before/after.

Research mode

web_search_plus(mode="research") runs a compact multi-provider sweep for grounding-heavy questions:

Picks up to 3 configured, auto-allowed providers (primary route first, then Linkup/Tavily/Exa/Firecrawl/… by preference), or uses an explicit research_providers list.
Queries them concurrently — wall-clock cost tracks the slowest provider, not the sum. Result ordering stays deterministic regardless of which provider finishes first.
Deduplicates results across providers.
Extracts the top research_extract_count URLs (default 3, max 5) via web_extract_plus auto fallback into source_summaries.

Research mode is best-effort: provider or extraction failures produce diagnostics in routing.provider_errors / routing.extraction_error instead of failing the whole call. A research_time_budget (seconds, default 55) gates which providers launch and whether extraction runs. Quality reports are always attached.

{
  "query": "What changed in the EU AI Act enforcement timeline?",
  "mode": "research",
  "research_extract_count": 3,
  "research_time_budget": 55
}

Routing preferences

web_routing_config_plus manages runtime routing behavior in memory, separate from provider secrets. ClawHub scanner constraints intentionally avoid runtime filesystem reads in this package.

Supported actions:

show
set_default_provider
set_auto_routing
set_provider_priority
set_fallback_provider
disable_provider
enable_provider
set_confidence_threshold
reset

Behavior notes:

if auto_routing=false, provider:auto becomes strict default_provider
explicit provider requests stay strict and do not silently fall back
normal auto mode can still use priority order, fallback provider, cooldowns, and retries
invalid plugin-provided routing config falls back to defaults with a warning
reset restores in-memory defaults for the selected namespace

Verification

Recommended checks:

npm test -- --test-reporter=spec
npm run build
npm pack --dry-run

Acknowledgments

This OpenClaw plugin tracks the useful feature direction from the Hermes and MCP sister projects, adapted for OpenClaw/ClawHub instead of copied blindly.

Web Search Plus