alexei-led/researching-web

Web Research in Pi

Use Pi's Perplexity-backed tools:

• web_search for source discovery.
• web_answer for focused factual questions.
• web_research for broad or multi-step investigations.

Boundaries

Use this for:

• comparisons and trade-offs
• recent facts and release behavior
• standards and external best practices
• vendor docs or public evidence

Do not use web tools for private code, secrets, credentials, proprietary data, or local code exploration. Use local search first for repo-specific questions.

Workflow

1. Restate the research question and decide if it is simple or broad.
2. For simple factual questions, use web_answer with a focused query.
3. For source selection, use web_search, then cite the best official or primary sources from the returned results.
4. For broad investigations, use web_research and tell the user the report will arrive asynchronously.
5. Compare claims against local project constraints before recommending changes.
6. Report uncertainty and source gaps directly.

Failure Cases

• Web tools return no useful results: report the gap directly in the Gaps section; do not fabricate sources.
• Question requires private code or credentials to answer: refuse the web query, answer from local context only, and note the limitation.
• web_research is unavailable: fall back to web_search + web_answer and note the fallback.

Output Contract

## Research Result

### Answer

<concise answer>

### Evidence

- <source title/url or grounded result> — <why it matters>

### Fit For This Repo

<what changes because of local constraints>

### Gaps

<any missing evidence>