dsh-web-tools
dsh-web-tools
Empower DeepSeek Harness with unified search and deep content extraction across the open web and social platforms.
Native-Capability Adaptation Across 9 Web Providers · SearchHints Semantic Compilation · Multi-Source Resilience · Xiaohongshu & Twitter / X Retrieval
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What problem does it solve?
When web access depends on a single provider, exhausted quota, rate limits, or timeouts can interrupt retrieval. Wrapping multiple APIs with a naive proxy often flattens them to a lowest common denominator, failing to leverage each provider's specialized search modes, categories, freshness, domain rules, and extraction capabilities.
dsh-web-tools connects Exa, Tavily, Firecrawl, Parallel, Brave, You.com, Jina, Keenable, SearXNG, Xiaohongshu, and Twitter / X to DSH’s standard web_search / web_fetch interface.
While keeping the tool interface unified, dsh-web-tools normalizes search intents through SearchHints and compiles queries into native provider-specific parameters. This leverages each engine's native categories, freshness filters, domain policies, regional targeting, and content extraction, while maximizing uptime through multi-key allocation, automated failover, and dedicated browser profiles.
Key Highlights:
- Native-Capability Adaptation Across 9 Web Providers: Keeps the standard
web_search / web_fetch contracts while compiling unified search intent into provider-specific native parameters instead of reducing every backend to the same lowest-common-denominator feature set.
- SearchHints → Provider-Specific Parameter Compilation: Normalizes technical, research, news, date, region, and domain constraints from queries, compiling them into provider-native parameters through deterministic code without additional LLM latency.
- Xiaohongshu & Twitter / X Platform Sources: Both platforms support signed-in native search, detail extraction, and returned comments or replies through dedicated local browser profiles.
- Multi-Source Scheduling & Resilience: Features multi-API-key pooling, 401 failover, 429 cooldown windows, configurable Ordered / Round-Robin / Random routing, and failover chains.
- Native DSH Tool Integration: Plugs directly into standard
web_search / web_fetch without requiring new tool declarations, and includes a session-level "Search Mode" toggle.
DSH Agent
│
web_search / web_fetch
│
▼
SearchHints
topic / freshness / domains
locale / cleanQuery ...
│
Provider-specific
compilation
│
┌────────┬─────────┬───────────┬──────────┐
│ Exa │ Tavily │ Firecrawl │ Parallel │ ...
│ │ │ │ │
│category│ topic │ github │objective │
│ date │ chunks │ research │ policy │
│domains │ time │ tbs │ queries │
└────────┴─────────┴───────────┴──────────┘
dsh-web-tools search strategy and multi-provider routing
Native-Capability Adaptation Across 9 Web Providers
The tool interface and search semantics are unified for the DSH agent, but underlying provider capabilities are not.
dsh-web-tools expresses query intent through SearchHints and crafts dedicated requests for each provider, rather than compressing all backends into a single set of lowest-common-denominator parameters.
For example, when searching for "AI coding references from the past week":
- Exa: Maps category filters, ISO date ranges, and domain constraints;
- Firecrawl: Maps technical queries to the native
github category, research queries to research, and applies tbs freshness filters;
- Parallel: Deconstructs the query into
objective, clean search_queries, and source_policy;
- Brave Search: Maps freshness, country, and language parameters with priority LLM Context endpoint;
- You.com: Leverages
boost_domains for soft domain preference.
All adaptations run through deterministic code without invoking an extra LLM call.
- Exa: Category mapping (
publication / news / financial report), ISO-8601 date ranges, and domain constraints.
- Firecrawl: Maps coding and technical queries to the
github category, academic queries to research, and supports tbs, domain constraints, and clean Markdown extraction.
- Parallel: Dual-layer semantics (
objective soft-steering + clean search_queries) and source_policy domain/freshness filters.
- Tavily: Supports
basic / advanced / fast / ultra-fast search depths; basic, advanced, and fast support chunks_per_source, with native news / finance topics, date ranges, country, and domain constraints.
- Brave Search: LLM Context endpoint with
pd/pw/pm/py freshness filters, country, and search language.
- You.com: Native
boost_domains soft-weighting, freshness presets, and geo/language targeting.
- Jina: Query noise reduction and ReaderLM-v2 high-precision markdown extraction.
- SearXNG: Self-hosted metasearch with
categories (it/science/news) and time_range.
- Keenable: Web search with
site domain scoping and published_after / published_before date filters.
- Native & Generic Page Extraction (
web_fetch): Automatically routes to provider-native scraping backends (Exa /contents, Tavily /extract, Firecrawl /scrape, Parallel /v1/extract, You.com /v1/contents, Jina Reader) when available; seamlessly falls back to the built-in generic HTTP fetcher (powered by local Defuddle Markdown parsing with SSRF/DNS protection) for SearXNG-only / Brave-only setups or when native extractors fail.
Social Platform Sources
Unlike general search engines, the plugin connects directly to native social platform sessions:
Each detail fetch includes at most 30 comments or replies, with up to 800 characters per entry. Additional pages or nested replies are explicitly marked as truncated to keep model context bounded.
Capability Boundary: For Xiaohongshu notes where the primary content resides in images, the fetcher returns the title, text description, engagement metrics, image count, and loaded comments; it does not perform optical character recognition (OCR) on image text or automatically paginate through all comments.
Agents use 小红书: or X: as a platform-routing prefix. The prefix selects the platform and is removed before the native search runs; for example, 小红书: DeepSeek Harness enters only DeepSeek Harness into Xiaohongshu's search box.
- General-Web Fallback: Uses configured general search or fetch providers when a platform source is disabled, temporarily unavailable, or reports a retryable failure. Non-retryable sign-in, access-control, search-restriction, and invalid-detail errors are returned directly so indexed content is not presented as native platform results, details, or comments.
- Automated Session Verification: Cookies are only the first gate. Xiaohongshu requires both
a1 and web_session, then performs a stabilized live /explore check in the interactive browser. A visible login wall invalidates the old session and restores the sign-in action; a wall appearing only after search submission is reported directly as search-restricted rather than being hidden behind indexed web results.
Xiaohongshu and Twitter X signed-in sessions verified automatically
Custom Search Providers & Address Overrides (Issue #9)
In addition to the 9 built-in search adapters and social platforms, dsh-web-tools natively supports Custom Search Providers and Built-in Service Address Overrides:
- Built-in Base URL Overrides:
- All 9 built-in search providers (Exa, Tavily, Firecrawl, Brave, You, Parallel, Jina, Keenable, SearXNG) support custom service addresses (e.g. self-hosted API gateways, reverse proxies).
- Preserves path prefixes (such as
/v1, /v2), prompts for confirmation on foreign destinations to protect API keys, and supports instant restoration to official defaults.
- Three Parallel Access Paths (Progressive Modal UX):
- Compatible Provider API: Follows the standard Tavily POST JSON specification with zero manual mapping. Ideal for self-hosted proxies and compatible gateways.
- Protocol Template: Pre-configured standard meta-search protocol (e.g. SearXNG JSON
GET /search?format=json), keyless by default with automatic result mapping.
- Custom JSON API (Generic JSON): Full declarative mapping engine for internal knowledge bases, private clusters, or arbitrary RESTful search endpoints:
- Custom Request Headers: Add arbitrary HTTP headers with
{{apiKey}} and {{query}} placeholder interpolation.
- Nested JSON Body Template (
bodyTemplate): In POST JSON mode, author arbitrary nested JSON request bodies (e.g. {"query": "{{query}}", "limit": "{{maxResults}}"}) without writing code.
- Query Parameters Template (
paramsTemplate): In GET or query-encoded mode, configure custom query parameters with full placeholder support.
- Declarative Response Mapping: Non-executable dot-path reader (
itemsPath, urlPath, titlePath, snippetPath, etc.) with prototype pollution defenses.
- Single-Pass Interpolation: Prevents recursive placeholder expansion and secret leakage when user query contains placeholder syntax.
- Real-Time Syntax Validation: Invalid JSON in the body template immediately triggers visual error feedback and disables testing/saving to prevent stale config writes.
- Credential Isolation & Key Pooling:
- Supports Bearer Token, API Key Header, HTTP Basic (isolated username/password storage with rollback compensation), and Keyless modes.
- API secrets are managed securely by the DSH credentials service and never echoed back to browser configuration views. Integrates with key rotation and health tracking.
- :
Fallback & Resilience
- Multi-API-Key Pooling: Assigns keys per provider, balances concurrent requests by lowest in-flight count, and fails over across keys on authentication errors.
- Deterministic Provider Fallback: Automatically cascades through the fallback chain on network failures, timeouts, 5xx server errors, 429 rate limits, or exhausted quotas.
- 429 Retry-After Cooldown: Enforces zero-request cooldown windows when servers return
Retry-After headers, skipping rate-limited providers immediately.
- Configurable Routing Policies:
web_search supports Ordered, Round-Robin, and Random starting-provider selection. web_fetch always follows the deterministic fetch-capable chain.
- Session-Level Search Mode: A refined, compact picker in the composer offering three deterministic retrieval behaviors (defaults to Smart):
- Smart (智能联网): Elastic semantic dispatch. The agent autonomously determines whether real-time web retrieval is needed based on conversational intent.
- Always (始终联网): Strong-consistency knowledge verification. Mandates at least one completed
web_search or web_fetch per turn to ensure claims are grounded in external sources.
- Off (关闭联网): Deterministic physical isolation. Replaces fragile prompt-only requests with a three-tier runtime enforcement barrier (dynamically withholds tools from the agent's schema, blocks model inertia via a monotonic guard before execution, and injects a single-turn explanation), ensuring zero outbound network leakage regardless of historical context.
- Intelligent Proxy Routing & Intranet Bypass: Seamlessly integrates with Windows system proxy settings and
HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, NO_PROXY environment variables. Equipped with DNS preflight routing: public traffic follows configured proxies, while loopback addresses and private subnets (RFC 1918) automatically bypass the proxy gate with direct dialing — completely eliminating connectivity drops for LAN-hosted SearXNG or custom private gateways when system proxies are active.
Installation & Updates
DSH version support: 0.1.0-rc.6 and later, including the 0.2.0-rc.x and 0.2.1-rc.x lines (both the latest and next channels are verified). The requirement lives in peerDependencies, which DSH uses to decide whether the plugin may activate; if the plugin stays inactive after a DSH upgrade, run dsh plugin --profile web update dsh-web-tools once.
# Install
dsh plugin --profile web add github:A3Boy/dsh-web-tools
# Update
dsh plugin --profile web update dsh-web-tools
# Remove
dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-web-tools
Restart dsh web and navigate to Settings → Web Search.
Provider Capabilities
| Provider | Search | Fetch / Extract | Key Integrations & Adaptations | Quota Inspection |
|---|
| Exa | Yes | Yes, /contents | Semantic retrieval (auto / fast / deep), category mappings, query-aware highlights, ISO-8601 date ranges | Dashboard only |
| Tavily | Yes | Yes, /extract | Search depths (basic / advanced / fast / ultra-fast); the first three support chunking, plus news / finance, date, country, and domain parameters | Official API |
| Firecrawl | Yes | Yes, /scrape | Technical queries map to github, academic queries to research; supports tbs, domain constraints, and clean Markdown extraction | Official API |
| Parallel | Yes | Yes, /v1/extract | Agent dual-layer semantic search (advanced / basic / turbo), objective soft-steering, source_policy | Dashboard only |
| Brave Search | Yes | — | Preferred LLM Context pre-extraction with pd/pw/pm/py freshness, country/lang filters, auto fallback to Classic Search | Response headers |
| You.com | Yes | Yes, /v1/contents | Snippet highlights, native boost_domains soft-weighting, freshness and country/lang filters, markdown endpoint | Official API |
| Jina | Yes | Yes, Reader | Search query noise filtering, ReaderLM-v2 high-precision markdown, token budget and truncation control |
Quick Recommendation Guide
New installations default to Exa; existing installations keep their saved provider configuration.
| Scenario | Recommended Provider | Notes |
|---|
| Social Discovery & Content Detail | Xiaohongshu / Twitter / X | Both platforms provide signed-in native search, detail retrieval, and returned comments or replies |
| Semantic Search / Technical Documentation | Exa | Semantic modes plus category, date, domain, and highlight parameters |
| Pre-Extracted Search Context | Brave Search | Prefers LLM Context with Classic Search fallback |
| Configurable Search Depth and Extraction | Tavily / Parallel | Provider-native depth modes and content extraction endpoints |
| Content-to-Markdown Extraction | Firecrawl / Jina | Main-content filtering, scraping, and Reader conversion |
| Freshness, Region, and Domain Preference | You.com | Freshness, locale, and boost_domains parameters |
| Self-Hosted Metasearch | SearXNG | Uses your SearXNG endpoint; the adapter requires no API key |
| Agent Search & Clean Summaries | Keenable | Native site domain filtering, published_after / published_before date filtering, and concise snippets |
Local Development
pnpm install # Install dependencies
pnpm test # Run test suite
pnpm run typecheck # Type checking
pnpm run build # Build bundle into lib/
Frequently Asked Questions
Self-Hosted SearXNG Configuration & Troubleshooting
When using Docker or self-hosted SearXNG, if you encounter no usable provider or HTTP 403 Forbidden errors, check the following:
- Enable JSON Output Format: SearXNG defaults to HTML-only output for privacy. Edit your SearXNG
settings.yml and add - json under search.formats:
search:
formats:
- html
- json # Required for API queries
Restart your SearXNG container (docker restart searxng) to apply changes.
- Keyless Setup: SearXNG is keyless by default — leave the API Key field empty in the settings card. Enter your instance URL in the
Base URL field (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8080) and click "Test Search" to verify connectivity.
Cache & Reinstallation
If cache issues occur after upgrading via local path or symlinks, reinstall from the profile directory:
cd ~/.dsh/profiles/web && pnpm install
Exa and Parallel balances are checked in their provider dashboards; Brave quota information comes from actual search response headers. Quota display is informational and does not affect routing or fallback.
Xiaohongshu and Twitter / X each use a dedicated local browser profile. The plugin does not export raw cookies to configuration, logs, or third-party relays; the browser sends them through normal authenticated requests to the corresponding platform domains.
License
MIT © A3Boy
