README
¶
online — one web research CLI for agents
online gives coding agents one small command surface for current web work. It searches multiple independent indexes, extracts known URLs as clean Markdown, crawls and maps sites, produces grounded answers and cited research, and retrieves code examples.
Default output is concise and easy for agents to read. --json emits the same normalized fields as compact JSON for programs.
Install
go install github.com/khanglvm/online/cmd/online@main
Use @main until the first release under the renamed module is published.
Capabilities
online search "current topic" --limit 5 --no-save
online answer "grounded question" --max-citations 4
online fetch https://example.com/article --max-length 4000
online fetch https://example.com/article --query "one bounded fact" --max-length 4000
online map https://docs.example.com --limit 15
online crawl https://docs.example.com --instructions "Find API docs" --limit 5 --max-chars 3000
online research "Compare the options and return a cited decision brief" --max-chars 10000
online code "correct library API usage with examples" --tokens 1200
Search supports source freshness, date and domain filters, localization, and focused verticals:
online search "query" --fresh --include-domain example.com
online search "query" --from 2026-01-01 --language vi --location Vietnam
online search "query" --type academic|company|people|news|personal-site|financial-report
Overlapping capabilities are executed across all configured sources automatically. URLs are canonicalized and deduplicated; fetch selects one clean document; crawl enforces one total page budget after merging. Agents do not need to understand source routing.
Agent-friendly output
query = "Go release notes"
status = "ok"
result_count = 2
result.1.title = "Go Release History"
result.1.url = "https://go.dev/doc/devel/release"
result.1.snippet = "..."
Long content uses a readable block form:
document.content <<'ONLINE_EOF'
# Clean Markdown
...
ONLINE_EOF
The delimiter changes automatically if page content contains ONLINE_EOF. Treat status = "partial", conflict = true, or source_error.* as unverified output that needs focused search and page-level confirmation. Fetch reports scope = "page"|"focused_excerpt" and truncated = true|false; focused excerpts and truncated pages cannot prove newest/oldest, absence, ordering, or a complete list.
Credentials
Store keys through stdin so they do not appear in shell history:
printf '%s\n' "$KEY_1" "$KEY_2" | online config keys set SOURCE_ID
online config keys list
Credentials are stored in ~/.online/config.yaml, written as 0600 inside a 0700 directory. The CLI uses only the configured free-of-charge web capabilities unless you explicitly configure another source.
Agent skills
online install-skill --build-only
npx skills add "$HOME/.online/skills/codex/online" \
--skill online --agent '*' --global --yes --copy
This builds the local skill folder and installs it globally for supported agents. The skill presents online as one capability-oriented tool without source-specific routing instructions.
Sessions
online session create "topic"
online search "subtopic" --session SESSION_ID
online results SESSION_ID
online note add SESSION_ID "finding"
online export SESSION_ID --format md
Development
go test ./...
go build ./cmd/online
go vet ./...
The project is pure Go and ships as a single binary.
Directories