Web Search (Brave) Extension

Adds a web_search tool backed by the Brave Search API. Results include titles, URLs, snippets, and age when available. This extension does not fetch page content.

Setup (recommended)

1. Get an API key from https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com.
2. In pi, run /login brave-search and paste the API key.
3. Optional: run /login brave-search-fallback to add a fallback key used when the primary key hits rate limits.

/web-search-setup, /web-search-setup primary, and /web-search-setup fallback prefill the corresponding /login command for convenience.

Advanced setup (environment or manual secrets)

You can provide keys through environment variables:

export BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY="PRIMARY_KEY"
export BRAVE_SEARCH_FALLBACK_API_KEY="FALLBACK_KEY"

You can also set keys directly in ~/.pi/agent/auth.json:

{
  "brave-search": { "type": "api_key", "key": "PRIMARY_KEY" },
  "brave-search-fallback": { "type": "api_key", "key": "FALLBACK_KEY" }
}

If auth.json already has entries, merge these keys instead of overwriting the file.

Install

pi install npm:@siddr/pi-web-search

Tool

web_search

Parameters:

• query (string) — single search query
• queries (string[]) — multiple search queries
• count (number, optional) — results per query (max 20)

Defaults:

• Single query: count = 10
• Multiple queries: count = 5 unless overridden

Behavior:

• Multiple queries return grouped results per query.
• Use Ctrl+O to expand tool output and show snippets.
• Output is truncated to 2000 lines or 50KB. When truncated, the full output is saved to a temp file and its path is included in the tool output.

Example prompts

Search for "brave search api" and summarize the top results.
Search for the following: queries=["pi coding agent extensions", "brave search api pricing"].
Search for "rust async runtime" with count=8.