Skip to main content

Web Search

Connect Toby to web search (powered by Brave Search) to search the web from chat. When configured, the webSearch tool is available in every chat session automatically—you don't need to select the integration explicitly.

CLI name: websearch

Shipped as toby-plugin-websearch (Swift). Release installs place it in ~/.toby/plugins/; from source run bun run build:plugin:websearch then toby plugins install ./dist/toby-plugin-websearch.

Prerequisites​

Get your API key​

Brave Search offers a free tier (up to 2,000 queries/month) and paid plans for higher volume.

1. Sign up for Brave Search API​

  1. Go to Brave Search API.
  2. Click Get Started and create an account.
  3. Choose a plan (Free is sufficient for personal use).

2. Copy your API key​

  1. Open the Brave Search API dashboard.
  2. Under API Keys, copy your subscription token.

Toby sends this token as the X-Subscription-Token header on each request.

Configure​

toby config

Go to Integrations → Web Search and enter:

FieldDescription
Brave Search API KeyYour Brave Search API subscription token

Save the configuration.

Connect​

toby connect websearch

Toby validates the API key and marks Web Search as connected.

Verify​

toby status integration -i websearch

Disconnect​

toby disconnect websearch

Using web search in chat​

Once the API key is configured, webSearch is available in all chat sessions as a global tool. You don't need to specify --integration websearch—Toby includes it automatically when the plugin is installed and the API key is present.

Example chat prompts​

  • "Search the web for the latest news on AI regulation"
  • "Look up the weather forecast for San Francisco this weekend"
  • "Research the best restaurants in Tokyo near Shibuya station"
  • "Find recent articles about Rust programming language"

Combined with web fetch​

You can combine webSearch with fetchWebContent (always available) to read full articles:

  1. Ask Toby to search for something: "Search for recent articles about TypeScript 5.5"
  2. Then ask it to read a result: "Read the content from the first result"

Toby will use webSearch to find results, then fetchWebContent to extract the clean article text from a chosen URL—stripping ads, navigation, and footers.

Search options​

The webSearch tool supports optional parameters that Toby can use automatically based on your request:

ParameterValuesDescription
count1–20Number of results to return (default 10)
freshnesspd, pw, pm, pyTime filter: past day, past week, past month, past year

For example, asking "What happened in tech news today?" will automatically use freshness: pd (past day).

If you previously used the built-in bravesearch integration, Toby migrates your API key and connected state to websearch automatically on startup.