Web Search Tool

[r0man]

It would be nice if ECA would support web searches, either with a MCP tool and/or a ECA native tool.

Some issue to think about:

• Most web search APIs are probably rate limited/need an API key?

• The Zed editor seems to do web search via it's "cloud provider" on their servers https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Azed-industries%2Fzed%20web%20search&type=code

• The Zed editor has support for multiple providers that can be swapped out. Probably also a good idea for ECA.

[ericdallo]

Agree, we support built-in web search for openai and anthropic but having a native tool would remove that need + support for all providers.

Opencode seems to do just query google

Any thoughts @editor-code-assistant/maintainers ?

[zikajk]

In my opinion, the existing MCPs (Brave Search, ...) are sufficient.
Having our own would make sense if we had something like research mode, in which such a thing was inevitable, and we couldn't rely on users having an MCP for searching.
But still, many websites immediately block us, and we probably couldn't compete with something like BrightData and the like.

[ericdallo]

@zikajk I didn't test brave search, but I think the point is: most people don't know about that.

One advantage of Cursor/claude is that it just works, the built-in tools are enough for >90% of users, I want the same in ECA.

What we could do is tune its tool description like opencode: "Only use if there is no other tool that provides web search.", so people can plug other MCPs in case ECA's one is not enough.
And I believe doing a Google search like opencode should be enough for most cases.

[zikajk]

I understand. However, as far as I know, Google searches are problematic. I think it might work for a while, but then Google will figure out how to block it. The API key is free, but it only allows 100 requests per day, and Brave is similar.
Zed is commercial product so they can pay for it 😸.
sst/opencode#1624

[ericdallo]

Hum yeah, good point