GreedySearch for Pi

Multi-engine AI web search for Pi via browser automation.

• No API keys
• Real browser results (Perplexity, Bing Copilot, Google AI)
• Optional Gemini synthesis with source grounding
• Chrome runs headless by default — no window, purely background

Install

pi install npm:@apmantza/greedysearch-pi

Or from git:

pi install git:github.com/apmantza/GreedySearch-pi

Tools

• greedy_search — multi-engine AI web search
• websearch — lightweight DuckDuckGo/Brave search (via pi-webaio)
• webfetch / webpull — page fetching and site crawling (via pi-webaio)

Quick usage

greedy_search({ query: "React 19 changes" });
greedy_search({ query: "Prisma vs Drizzle", engine: "all", depth: "fast" });
greedy_search({
  query: "Best auth architecture 2026",
  engine: "all",
  depth: "deep",
});
// Headless is the default — no window. To see the browser:
// Set GREEDY_SEARCH_VISIBLE=1 before launching Pi

Parameters (greedy_search)

• query (required)
• engine: all (default), perplexity, bing, google, gemini
• depth: standard (default), fast, deep
• fullAnswer: return full single-engine output instead of preview
• headless: set to false to show Chrome window (default: true)

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Description
GREEDY_SEARCH_VISIBLE	(unset)	Set to 1 to show Chrome window instead of headless
GREEDY_SEARCH_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MINUTES	5	Minutes of inactivity before auto-killing headless Chrome
GREEDY_SEARCH_LOCALE	en	Default result language (en, de, fr, es, ja, etc.)
CHROME_PATH	auto-detected	Path to Chrome/Chromium executable

Depth modes

• fast - quickest, no synthesis/source fetching
• standard - balanced default for engine: "all" (synthesis + fetched sources)
• deep - strongest grounding and confidence metadata

Runtime commands

# Headless (default, no GUI)
node ~/.pi/agent/git/GreedySearch-pi/bin/launch.mjs
node ~/.pi/agent/git/GreedySearch-pi/bin/launch.mjs --status
node ~/.pi/agent/git/GreedySearch-pi/bin/launch.mjs --kill

# Visible (show browser window — useful for one-time Cloudflare clearance)
node ~/.pi/agent/git/GreedySearch-pi/bin/launch-visible.mjs
node ~/.pi/agent/git/GreedySearch-pi/bin/launch-visible.mjs --kill

# Chrome auto-cleaned after 5 min idle (prevents OOM)
# Override: GREEDY_SEARCH_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MINUTES=10

## Requirements

- Chrome
- Node.js 20.11.0+ (22+ recommended)

## Known engine quirks

### Bing Copilot

Bing Copilot detects headless Chrome and sandboxes all AI responses inside nested iframes (`copilot.microsoft.com` → `copilot.fun` → `blob:`). In this mode the copy button is hidden and the Cloudflare Turnstile challenge blocks content delivery. The clipboard-based extraction cannot work.

**Auto-recovery:** When Bing fails with any extraction error (clipboard, verification, Cloudflare), GreedySearch automatically switches to **visible Chrome**, retries the search, and caches Cloudflare clearance cookies in the Chrome profile. You may need to solve the Cloudflare challenge **once** manually when the visible Chrome window appears. After that, all subsequent headless searches bypass the challenge — the cookies persist in the profile.

If you prefer to skip the auto-recovery delay, launch visible Chrome ahead of time:

```bash
node ~/.pi/agent/git/GreedySearch-pi/bin/launch-visible.mjs

Anti-detection

Headless Chrome auto-injects stealth patches before any page JavaScript runs:

• navigator.webdriver hidden, plugins/languages faked, window.chrome shimmed
• WebGL vendor spoofed (Intel Iris), realistic hardware concurrency / memory
• CDP automation markers deleted, requestAnimationFrame kept alive
• Human-like click simulation with coordinate jitter and variable delays

This bypasses casual bot detection (basic navigator.webdriver checks) but does not defeat commercial anti-bot services (DataDome, PerimeterX, Kasada). Bing Copilot specifically detects headless and sandboxes responses behind Cloudflare Turnstile — see Known engine quirks for the auto-recovery mechanism.

When using depth: "standard" or depth: "deep", source content is fetched and synthesized:

• Reddit — Uses Reddit's public .json API for posts and comments (no scraping)
• GitHub — Uses GitHub REST API for repos, READMEs, and file trees
• General web — Mozilla Readability extraction with browser fallback for bot-blocked pages
• Metadata — title, author/byline, site name, publish date, language, excerpt

Project layout

• bin/ — runtime CLIs (search.mjs, launch.mjs, launch-visible.mjs, visible.mjs, cdp.mjs)
• extractors/ — engine-specific automation + stealth/consent handling
• src/ — search pipeline, chrome management, source fetching, formatting
• skills/ — Pi skill metadata

Testing

Cross-platform test runner (Windows + Unix):

npm test              # run all tests
npm run test:quick    # skip slow tests
npm run test:smoke    # basic health check

Full bash test suite (Unix only):

npm run test:bash           # comprehensive tests
./test.sh parallel          # race condition tests
./test.sh flags             # flag/option tests

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT