Search the web, then pull the top sources as EVIDENCE (no LLM synthesis).
PRIMARY RESEARCH TOOL — use when the user asks to research, investigate,
deep-dive, fact-check, or learn about a topic. Returns a ``citations``
list with stable [n] numbers and an ``evidence`` list of per-source
markdown — the agent does the synthesis from evidence.
Multi-pass mode: set iterations=2-3 to auto-run additional searches with
refined queries (alternatives, criticism, latest developments) and append
deduplicated evidence. Each pass adds up to ``scrape_top`` new sources.
Args:
query: search string.
limit: how many search results to fetch.
scrape_top: how many of those to actually fetch content from.
prefer: "auto" | "fast" | "stealth" | "llm".
iterations: 1 (default, single pass), 2-3 (multi-pass with refined
queries targeting evidence gaps). Each pass searches from a
different angle and deduplicates by URL.
Returns:
{query, iterations_run, queries: [str], hits: [{url, title, snippet}],
citations: [{url, title}], evidence: [{url, title, markdown}],
scraped, used_engines, elapsed_ms}
or {error, query, hint} on failure.