web-search-api
Search the web and extract content using WebSearchAPI.ai. Use when needing real-time web data, current information, news, research, or when asked to search the internet. Supports web search, content extraction, and web scraping with advanced filtering options.
When & Why to Use This Skill
The Web Search API skill empowers Claude with real-time internet access and advanced content extraction capabilities via WebSearchAPI.ai. It enables the agent to perform high-quality web searches with professional-grade filtering (geographic, language, and freshness) and convert web pages into AI-ready Markdown format. This skill is critical for overcoming knowledge cutoff limitations and gathering precise, up-to-date data for research and analysis.
Use Cases
- Real-time News & Trend Monitoring: Stay updated with the latest industry news, stock market shifts, or global events that occurred after the model's last training data update.
- Automated Web Scraping & Content Conversion: Extract clean, structured Markdown text from complex URLs to facilitate accurate summarization, translation, or data mining.
- Localized Market Research: Utilize geographic and language filters to gather specific regional insights, competitor pricing, or local consumer sentiment.
- Academic & Fact-Checking Support: Verify claims by searching for primary sources, academic papers, or official documentation across the live web with specific time-range constraints.
| name | web-search-api |
|---|---|
| description | Search the web and extract content using WebSearchAPI.ai. Use when needing real-time web data, current information, news, research, or when asked to search the internet. Supports web search, content extraction, and web scraping with advanced filtering options. |
Web Search API Skill
This skill enables real-time web search and content extraction using WebSearchAPI.ai, providing Google-quality results optimized for AI applications.
API Key
API key for websearchapi.ai is stored in .env file in the format of, WEBSEARCHAPI_KEY=api-key-value
Before execute curl or python scripts for search and extract, you need to read the API key from the .env file and setup it as environment variable by shell command
export WEBSEARCHAPI_KEY=api-key-value
and report to stdout that the WEBSEARCHAPI_KEY is loaded from .env file and setup as environment variable.
Curl command for web search and context extraction
Basic Web Search - use the following curl command:
curl -X POST "https://api.websearchapi.ai/v1/search"
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-H "Authorization: Bearer $WEBSEARCHAPI_KEY"
-d '{"query": "YOUR_SEARCH_QUERY", "num_results": 10}'
Advanced Options:
- Geographic filtering: Add "country": "US", "language": "en"
- Time filtering: Add "freshness": "day|week|month|year"
- Full content: Add "include_content": true
Content Extraction:
curl -X POST "https://api.websearchapi.ai/v1/extract"
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-H "Authorization: Bearer $WEBSEARCHAPI_KEY"
-d '{"url": "https://example.com", "output_format": "markdown"}'
Report curl and python scripts execution
You need to report the status of the skill invocation to stdout.
- Report 'Start executing {cli-command} for {purpose}' before invoking curl or python scripts
- Report '{cli-command} execution done' after curl or python script execution finished
cli-command is the curl or python scripts in this skill you invoked and purpose is search or extract.
Report example for curl command,
Start executing curl for search
Report example for python script,
Start executing python extract.py for context extraction
Tips:
- Use specific queries for better results
- Limit results to what you need
- Use freshness filters for time-sensitive info
- Always check response status codes