With the bundled web-xai plugin enabled (default), the registry's single-eligible
walk returned the xai provider and lit check_web_api_key while _get_backend never
autodetects xai, so web_search/web_extract registered and failed exactly as
#116175 describes. The gate now treats such a pick the way the dispatcher does:
servable only if the keyless tier would be; the keyless walk is shared via
_keyless_backend().
check_web_api_key OR-ed _is_backend_available over _LEGACY_WEB_BACKENDS,
which includes "xai" — a bare has_xai_credentials() probe kept in
_BUILTIN_AVAILABILITY for bookkeeping. XAI_API_KEY or an xai OAuth grant
therefore registered web_search/web_extract even when no xai web provider
could serve: the bundled web-xai plugin disabled via plugins.disabled,
failing to load, or absent in a stripped environment. Dispatch then fell
through to "No web search provider configured" on every call.
The gate now skips the bare xai probe; the plugin path
(get_active_search_provider / get_active_extract_provider) still lights
the tools when the web-xai provider is actually registered and available.
A stored web.backend: xai still counts, so an explicit selection keeps
surfacing its own dispatch error.
Fixes#113017. _get_backend() treated any web selection — including
per-capability keys (web.search_backend / web.extract_backend) — as a stored
shared selection and short-circuited to firecrawl with no ladder. Setting only
web.extract_backend therefore silently rerouted web_search off autodetect.
The no-ladder firecrawl branch now requires a shared selection
(read_selection: use_gateway); per-capability keys name only their own
capability, and the other keeps its normal cascade.
Test: new tests/tools/test_web_backend_capability_isolation.py — red on base
(search resolved to firecrawl), green after fix; managed use_gateway still
resolves firecrawl with no ladder.
Adds plugins/web/perplexity — a keyed-only WebSearchProvider over httpx:
- search: POST https://api.perplexity.ai/search (documented Search API),
search_context_size=low so `snippet` stays description-sized;
results[].snippet -> description, max_results capped at the API's 20.
- extract: POST /sdk/content/snippets — the query-relevant page-excerpt
route behind `pplx content snippets` (the CLI's `content fetch` is
deprecated upstream). web_extract has no query, so the URLs' path words
serve as the relevance query; per-URL `error` entries survive a 200.
- Wired into the same touchpoints as the other keyed vendors: legacy
backend set + credential ladder + availability probe (web_tools),
registry preference walk, OPTIONAL_ENV_VARS, `hermes config`/status/
dump key lists, nous_subscription direct-credential detection, setup
summary, test conftests, docs.
Not a keyless-ring member (Perplexity has no anonymous tier). Related
closed PRs #9192 / #23981 / #45225 predate the plugin ABC.
Every PLUGIN-COMPAT __getattr__ now calls hermes_cli.plugin_compat.warn_once(facade, name, target) before
resolving, emitting a HermesPluginCompatWarning (FutureWarning) once per process per name: old path, new
path, removal target. Importing a facade for its live API stays silent; only resolving a moved name warns.
COMPAT_MANIFEST.md documents the warning and how to silence it during migration.
Verified the runtime never routes through a pointer: every entry point (run_agent, cli, hermes_cli.main,
gateway.run, tui_gateway.server, web_server, model_tools + tool discovery, hermes_state, cron.scheduler,
browser_tool, mcp_tool, kanban, auth) imports clean and `hermes doctor` runs end to end with the warning
promoted to an error.
Also restores the check_compat_pointers CI step to .github/workflows/lint.yml, which a0be177aac dropped
when the compat layer was regenerated (the lint script itself was present; the workflow step was not).
hermes_cli/plugin_compat.py, tests/test_plugin_compat_warning.py and the two-line insert per facade are
part of the compat layer and go away with it.
The Sep 2026 decomposition (PR #102117) makes internal import paths a non-API: names now live in
the focused modules that define them. This commit is the ONLY thing keeping the old paths alive,
so external plugins have time to update. It is deliberately a single, unsquashed commit:
git revert <this sha>
removes every shim, stub and manifest at once on the announced date. Nothing in-tree may depend on
these pointers: scripts/check_compat_pointers.py (wired into lint.yml) fails CI if it does.
What it adds (see COMPAT_MANIFEST.md, compat_manifest.json):
- 332 facade modules get one delimited `PLUGIN-COMPAT` block appended at the end of the file
- 1,172 moved names resolved lazily via a module `__getattr__` (PEP 562) — never a top-level import,
so no import cycles; facades that already had `__getattr__` get a chained one
- 592 third-party/stdlib names the old modules used to expose, with their original import statements
- 266 public definitions that had been deleted as unused, restored byte-for-byte from the pre-decomposition
tree (+40 private helpers and 16 imports pulled in only because a restored definition needs them)
- 3 deleted modules recreated as re-export stubs (gateway/startup_watchdog, hermes_cli/observability/
relay_runtime, tools/environments/modal_utils)
- private names (`_x`) get no pointer: they were never API (3,792 skipped)
Verified: all 335 touched modules import under a fresh HERMES_HOME and every manifest name resolves;
the lint reports zero in-tree uses; ruff clean; targeted suites unchanged.
For each issue anchor present in BASE 63279301bc non-test .py and absent on HEAD, the BASE comment/docstring block was re-attached at the HEAD location of the code it explained (matched by the distinctive code line / enclosing def). Sentences already covered by an existing HEAD comment were deduped; the issue number always survives. Insert-only: no code lines changed.
- Tavily plugin deleted (plugins/web/tavily), keyless endpoints and
ring entry removed from keyless_mcp, legacy backend set / credential
ladder / preference walks / rescue key map scrubbed.
- TAVILY_API_KEY deregistered across config, setup, status, dump, and
nous_subscription surfaces. The tvly- redaction pattern stays --
legacy keys in user envs still deserve masking.
- Sibling test pins migrated (keenable/exa stand in where tavily was
the fixture vendor); tavily test suite deleted.
- Docs updated: web-search, configuration, integrations,
environment-variables, tools-reference, web-dashboard, provider
plugin dev guide.
Live-verified from an isolated HERMES_HOME with all web creds blanked:
zero-config resolution lands in the 4-vendor ring, live keyless ring
search succeeds, no tavily anywhere in resolution order.
Review fixes for #94618 (all three blockers reproduced by the reviewer
through the real web_extract_tool):
1. Cache lookup moved AFTER provider resolution and strict-selection
validation, and gated per-URL on the website blocklist policy — a
blocklist-blocked or misconfigured-backend call now behaves exactly
as it would without a cache instead of serving cached content.
2. Rescue-served extract batches are never cached (mirrors the search
memo's exclusion), keeping one-shot rescue one-shot.
3. Cache entries now get dedicated per-(url, format, provider) files
instead of sharing the URL-keyed truncate-store file — html and
markdown (or two backends') copies of one URL no longer overwrite
each other, and switching extract backends within the TTL never
serves the old backend's rendering.
Also from review: per-process index tmp filename (cross-process writers
can no longer truncate each other mid-write) and held flight locks are
never evicted from the bounded lock table (eviction could have allowed
a duplicate paid request).
New regression tests for formats/provider keying; E2E harness extended
with policy-block, strict-selection, rescue-two-call, and dual-format
scenarios — 6/6 pass; original 13/13 still pass.
Repeat searches (same normalized query + provider) within a 20-minute
TTL are served from an in-process memo, and concurrent identical
queries are single-flighted so a parallel subagent fan-out pays for
one vendor request instead of N. Requested limits bucket up to
10/20/50/100 so near-identical requests share an entry; callers get
their requested count sliced from the bucket.
Repeat extracts of the same URL are served from the existing
cache/web full-text store (previously written for read_file paging
but never read back), via a small JSON sidecar index. Disk-backed, so
CLI, gateway, cron, and subagents share it. Cached extracts re-run
the normal truncate pipeline, so per-call char_limit still works.
Both caches sit after every safety gate (secret-URL, SSRF, policy,
provider resolution) and directly around the paid vendor call — hits
skip only the network request. Only successful responses cache;
rescue-served responses are never cached (one-shot rescue must stay
one-shot). Config: web.cache_enabled (default on),
web.cache_ttl_minutes (default 20, clamped 1-1440).
Idea credit: query coalescing + num-bucketing pattern observed in
Apodex FrontierAgent (Apache-2.0).
The one-shot keyless extract rescue (d1eefe6ac) treated ANY whole-batch
failure as a backend outage. A website-policy refusal also arrives as a
failed batch, so blocked URLs were routed through the free-tier ring:
in CI the ring's live fetch attempt returned a result for the wrong URL
or a bare None error, turning test_website_policy reds on main (slices
8/12 and 12/12) — and in production it would fetch content the user
explicitly blocked.
_rescue_extract now partitions policy blocks (blocked_by_policy flag or
policy error text) out of the rescue set: they are preserved verbatim,
only genuine failures ride the ring, and order/merge parity is kept.
Two sabotage-verified regression tests pin the class.
When the chosen/keyed backend fails a web_search or web_extract call
(bad key, upstream outage, 5xx, raised exception), that single call
retries on the keyless free-tier ring instead of erroring. The next
call attempts the chosen backend again — no sticky failover, no state.
Resolves the keyed half of #78984/#32159 (keyless half landed in the
ring PR).
- tools/web_tools.py: _rescue_eligible (keyed ring vendors + non-ring
backends eligible; keyless-mode calls excluded — they already walked
the ring), _rescue_search/_rescue_extract (search annotates
rescued_from + backend_error naming the original failure and the
retry-next-call semantics; extract rescues only whole-batch failures,
partial failures pass through untouched; rescue failure preserves the
ORIGINAL backend error with the rescue note appended)
- both dispatchers wrap the provider call: failure-results AND raised
exceptions rescue; ineligible paths re-raise unchanged
- web.keyless_rescue config key (default true; implicitly off when
keyless_fallback is off); docs updated
Live E2E: keyed Tavily with an invalid key 401'd and the call was
served by the real ring with the rescue annotation; a second call
re-attempted Tavily first (statelessness proven); whole-batch extract
rescue returned real page content. 13 new tests; 67 green across the
keyless suites.
Fresh installs with zero web credentials now rotate web_search/
web_extract across FIVE vendors' public free tiers — Exa, Parallel,
Tavily, Firecrawl, Keenable — instead of a 2-vendor 50/50 split, with
next-in-line ring failover on rate limits (multi-hop until a vendor
serves or the ring is exhausted; served_by marks the actual vendor).
- plugins/web/keenable/: new bundled provider (search via /v1/search,
fetch via /v1/fetch; keyed Bearer or keyless with the mandatory
X-Keenable-Title app header). Credit: integration proposed by
Ilya Gusev (Keenable) in #49758; Free/Paid picker rows included.
- keyless_mcp: tavily/firecrawl/keenable keyless search+extract
wrappers, _KEYLESS_RING + per-process round-robin cursor (seeded by
the random session id, advances per unpinned request), pinned-vendor
entry (pin = start there; rotation off), paid-pinned vendors excluded
from the ring entirely.
- Tavily/Firecrawl providers route keyless traffic through the ring;
both are now default-on ring members (no longer selection-gated).
- web_tools/registry: keenable in backend sets, auto-detect, availability
probes; _keyless_preference() delegates to the ring cursor.
- KEENABLE_API_KEY in OPTIONAL_ENV_VARS; docs updated (ring semantics).
Live E2E: all 10 vendorXcapability paths (5 search + 5 extract) served
real results keyless; rotation cycled all five vendors over 5 dispatch
calls; double-throttle failover walked exa->parallel->tavily.
Salvaged from #78434 by @Slobaka (also the issue reporter; earlier than
the competing #78436). hermes doctor no longer paints a green web check
when the explicitly selected provider cannot initialize — web splits
into per-capability rows (web search / web extract) resolved through
the same registry resolvers the dispatchers use, with readiness from a
true availability probe (_provider_is_ready).
Keyless-tier integration on top of the salvage:
- _provider_is_ready counts is_keyless_available() as ready — keyless
mode is a working state, not a misconfiguration (zero-config installs
and selected-keyless Tavily/Firecrawl show ok, not warn)
- Tavily/Firecrawl gain is_keyless_available() (True only when
explicitly selected — they stay out of the zero-config fallback)
- doctor triggers plugin discovery before reading the registry (fresh
doctor processes saw an empty registry and warned on everything)
E2E: searxng-selected-without-URL warns (the #78412 repro);
zero-config, tavily-keyless, firecrawl-keyless all read ok;
parallel pinned paid without a key warns.
- Updated the Tavily API key description to clarify that it is optional and keyless access is supported.
- Modified the Tavily plugin and provider to handle requests with or without an API key, using Bearer authentication when the key is provided.
- Enhanced documentation to reflect the new keyless functionality and updated environment variable descriptions.
- Added tests to ensure correct behavior for both keyed and keyless requests.
Unpinned zero-credential installs now pick Exa or Parallel by the
parity of the per-process random session id (stable within a process,
even split fleet-wide) instead of always favoring Parallel. An explicit
hermes tools selection (web.backend / per-capability keys) bypasses the
split entirely; the runner-up vendor stays in the walk as fallback.
Live E2E: 6 fresh processes split 3/3 between vendors, each performed
a real keyless search via its picked endpoint; explicit pin verified.
_get_backend returns the stored web.backend verbatim (mapping the managed
'nous' selection to the firecrawl provider) — unknown names surface the
honest selection-naming error at dispatch instead of silently rerouting
through the credential ladder, which now runs only on never-configured
installs. _get_capability_backend no longer discards an explicit
search/extract backend when its availability probe fails. The firecrawl
client resolves strictly: 'nous' => managed gateway only (unavailable =>
selection-naming error), stored vendor => direct only (no FIRECRAWL key
=> error, never a silent managed fallback billed to Nous).
With zero web credentials configured, web_search/web_extract previously
resolved to the nonfunctional firecrawl sentinel and errored. Now the
backend resolution walks a strictly-last keyless tier: Parallel's and
Exa's public anonymous MCP endpoints (the same free tiers opencode ships
as its default search path).
- plugins/web/keyless_mcp.py: minimal JSON-RPC tools/call client for
mcp.exa.ai + search.parallel.ai (SSE + plain JSON parsing, typed
errors, per-process random session id, no user identifiers)
- WebSearchProvider.is_keyless_available(): separate weaker tier that
never leaks into is_available(), so keyed setups are never pre-empted
- Exa/Parallel providers: route to keyless endpoints when their key is
absent; keyed SDK path unchanged
- registry + _get_backend(): keyless walk (parallel -> exa) strictly
after every keyed/importable candidate; check_web_api_key() lights
the tools up on zero-credential installs
- web.keyless_fallback config key (default true) to disable the tier
- docs: web-search.md + configuration.md
E2E-verified against both live endpoints from an isolated HERMES_HOME
(search + extract via the real dispatchers, disable-flag negative path).
Spill files (terminal overflow, hook context, web_extract full text,
subagent summaries) were written with plain open()/write_text into
predictable directories. A pre-planted symlink at any of those paths
redirected the write onto an arbitrary user-owned file, and raw
pre-redaction terminal/hook spills landed world-readable under the
default umask.
New tools/spill_safety.py helpers create files with
O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_NOFOLLOW (a link-shaped path fails the write instead of
following it) and overwrite via lstat-checked unlink + exclusive
re-create, so even the redaction rewrite cannot be diverted. Private
tier (0o700 dir / 0o600 file) covers raw terminal and hook spills;
cache/web and cache/delegation keep umask perms because those dirs are
bind-mounted into remote backends that must read them.
Pattern borrowed from DeepSeek Harness dsh-spill-local (MIT):
private root + exclusive owner-only opens for spill artifacts.
When web_search results are passed directly to web_extract, the URLs
field contains dict objects (e.g., {"url": "...", "title": "..."})
rather than plain URL strings. Two code paths assumed URLs were always
strings and crashed:
- agent/display.py get_cute_tool_message for web_extract: tried to call
url.replace() on a dict, causing AttributeError
- tools/web_tools.py web_extract_tool loop: tried regex search on a dict,
causing TypeError
Both now extract the URL string from dict objects (url or href field) or
fall back to empty string, preserving the cosmetic display and allowing
the tool to process the URLs correctly.
Fixes#61693
`_load_web_config()` is typed `-> dict` but returned `load_config().get("web",
{})`, which is `None` when the config has a present-but-null `web:` section
(YAML `web:` with no body). Every caller then does
`_load_web_config().get(...)` and raises `AttributeError: 'NoneType' object
has no attribute 'get'` — this hits `_get_backend`, `check_web_api_key`, and
the extract-char-limit reader.
Separately, `check_web_api_key()` read the backend as
`.get("backend", "").lower()`; a null `web.backend` value yields `None` (the
`""` default only applies when the key is absent), so `None.lower()` raised.
`check_web_api_key` is the `check_fn` gate for `web_search`/`web_extract`, so
this surfaced as an exception during tool-availability checking.
- Make `_load_web_config()` honor its `-> dict` contract (`... or {}`), fixing
the null-`web:`-section crash at every call site.
- Guard the backend value in `check_web_api_key` with `or ""`, mirroring the
existing guard in `_get_backend`.
Adds regression tests for both the null-backend-value and null-web-section
cases.
When a bundled web provider (firecrawl, tavily, exa, ...) is listed in
plugins.disabled, its provider never registers and the web_search/
web_extract dispatchers emitted the misleading "No web extract provider
configured. Set web.extract_backend to ..." — even though the backend was
configured correctly. The real fix is to re-enable the plugin.
- web_tools.py + web_search_registry.py: when the configured backend names
a disabled bundled web plugin, both dispatchers now point the user at the
actual cause (re-enable the plugin) instead of a wrong config hint.
- plugins_cmd.py cmd_enable: enabling by canonical key now also clears the
manifest-name alias (web-firecrawl) from plugins.disabled, so the
suggested command actually re-enables the plugin ('explicit disable wins'
matches on the name too).
- plugins_cmd.py cmd_toggle / _run_composite_ui / _run_composite_fallback:
the interactive 'hermes plugins' menu now persists the canonical key
(web/firecrawl), never the bare manifest name — the drift that put the
offending entry in plugins.disabled in the first place.
Follow-up to #59518 (which fixed web credential resolution, a different
cause). Fixes the disabled-plugin symptom reported after that PR.
The Firecrawl provider used os.getenv() to read FIRECRAWL_API_KEY and
FIRECRAWL_API_URL, which only checks the process environment. When
values are supplied through Hermes's ~/.hermes/.env config mechanism
(via hermes_cli.config.get_env_value), they are not guaranteed to be
present in os.environ for every gateway/tool execution path.
Switch to get_env_value() which checks both os.environ and the .env
file, matching the pattern used by other providers (nous_subscription,
setup, discord adapter).
Fixes#40190
Self-review follow-up. check_web_api_key() had a hand-rolled 'walk all
registered providers and probe each' fallback that duplicated the registry's
own availability-filtered resolvers (get_active_search_provider /
get_active_extract_provider, backed by _resolve()) — a second resolution path
that could diverge (the hand-rolled walk ignored capability, so a search-only
custom provider was handled inconsistently). Delegate to the registry's
resolvers so there is one authority for 'is a custom provider usable'.
Also: _get_backend()'s tail walk now probes provider.is_available() directly
instead of round-tripping through _is_backend_available(provider.name), which
redundantly re-did the registry get_provider() lookup on a provider object
already in hand. Both fallback loops guard is_available() against exceptions.
Documented that _LEGACY_WEB_BACKENDS intentionally includes 'xai' (probed via
has_xai_credentials, not a registered provider) while the registry's
_LEGACY_PREFERENCE excludes it, so the two built-in sets don't silently drift.
Plugin-registered web providers (registered via agent.web_search_registry)
were invisible to the tool-availability gate: _is_backend_available() was a
hardcoded env-var if-chain that returned False for any name outside the eight
built-in backends. Because check_web_api_key() is the check_fn for both
web_search and web_extract, a working custom provider with no built-in creds
left both tools filtered out of the toolset entirely.
Fix at the single chokepoint: _is_backend_available() now delegates non-legacy
backend names to the registered provider's is_available(), falling back to the
legacy built-in probes for known names and unregistered providers. Because
_get_backend(), _get_capability_backend(), and check_web_api_key() all resolve
availability through this one function, the fix cascades to every caller —
including the per-capability extract selection that produced a dead-end
'search-only' error (#32698). The two remaining hardcoded whitelist
early-returns (_get_backend, check_web_api_key) now also accept registered
names, and both walk registered providers as a final fallback so a custom
backend still resolves when no built-in has credentials.
Built-in backend priority is preserved unchanged: the registry is consulted
only for names outside _LEGACY_WEB_BACKENDS.
Fixes#28651Fixes#31873Fixes#32698
Add policy gates and output redaction for browser/CDP surfaces, strengthen session ownership tracking, and block credential-like query parameters before third-party browser/web backends receive URLs.
Inspired by the agbrowse review: keep local browser magic-link flows possible while preventing cloud reader/browser escalation from receiving opaque token, code, signature, or key query parameters.
Two robustness gaps from the #54843 truncate-store path:
- _store_full_text wrote the full clean page to cache/web with no upper
bound (path.write_text(content)); a multi-MB page → unbounded per-extract
disk write. Cap at MAX_STORED_TEXT_CHARS (2MB, the pre-truncate-store
refusal ceiling) with a marker when capped.
- The truncation footer told the model 'read_file ... offset=<line>' — a
literal placeholder it had to guess. Compute the real starting line of the
omitted middle (head line count + 1) so the first read_file lands in the gap.
* feat(web_extract): truncate-and-store instead of LLM summarization
web_extract no longer runs an auxiliary LLM over scraped pages. The extract
backends (Firecrawl/Tavily/Exa/Parallel) already return clean, boilerplate-
stripped markdown, so we return it directly: pages within a char budget
(default 15000, web.extract_char_limit) come back whole; larger pages get a
head+tail window plus an explicit footer giving the stored full-text path and
the read_file call to page through the omitted middle. The full clean text is
written to cache/web (mounted read-only into remote backends like the other
cache dirs), so nothing is lost.
Inline base64 images are converted to [IMAGE: alt] placeholders (token bombs
dropped) while real http(s) image URLs are preserved as links so the agent can
still web_extract/vision_analyze them.
Removes process_content_with_llm + the chunked summarizer + check_auxiliary_model
+ _resolve_web_extract_auxiliary. context_references._default_url_fetcher is
updated to the truncate path and its stale data.documents shape read is fixed
to results (it was silently returning empty).
Live before/after eval (firecrawl, 4 URLs): 11.7x faster overall (176.6s ->
15.1s); 10-60x on large pages. Quality identical; findability 4/4 (answer
recoverable from stored full text on every truncated page). web_search is
unchanged.
No own scraper added; no changes to web_search.
* fix(web_extract): add char_limit to execute_code web_extract stub
The new web_extract char_limit param must appear in the code_execution_tool
_TOOL_STUBS signature (and doc line) or test_stubs_cover_all_schema_params
fails — the stub schema must cover every real schema param.
Remove the free Parallel Search MCP path and restore the keyed Parallel backend behavior from before it was introduced.
Also drops the keyless fallback registration/display labeling tests and returns the Parallel SDK pin to the prior version.
web_search/web_extract are documented to work with zero setup via the bundled
keyless Parallel free-MCP backend, but that only holds when the bundled
plugins/web/* providers are registered. The dispatch relied entirely on the
general plugin sweep to do that; when the sweep finishes without registering
them (its exception swallowed as a warning, a packaged layout where it ran
before the bundled tree was importable, or a stale empty-discovery cache), the
registry is empty and BOTH tools dead-end on "No web {search,extract} provider
configured" — despite needing no setup at all.
_ensure_web_plugins_loaded now verifies the keyless default landed after the
sweep and, if not, registers the bundled web providers directly against the
registry. Idempotent, a no-op on the healthy path (one dict lookup), and honors
an explicit plugins.disabled entry.
Make Parallel the web search/extract backend with a zero-setup free tier:
- Keyless (no PARALLEL_API_KEY): web_search/web_extract work out of the box via
Parallel's free hosted Search MCP (search.parallel.ai/mcp), and parallel
becomes the default backend when no other web credentials are configured
(ahead of ddgs, which is search-only). A small hand-rolled Streamable-HTTP
JSON-RPC client speaks the MCP's web_search/web_fetch tools; the existing
web_search/web_extract tools are the only tools registered.
- Keyed (PARALLEL_API_KEY set): uses the Parallel v1 REST endpoints
(client.search / client.extract with advanced_settings.full_content) — no beta.
Bumps parallel-web 0.4.2 -> 0.6.0.
- Attribution: on the free path only, results carry provider/attribution and the
CLI tool line reads "Parallel search" / "Parallel fetch"; the paid path is
unbranded.
- Selection/registration: web tools register unconditionally (free MCP backstop)
while check_web_api_key remains a real usability probe; explicit per-capability
backends are honored (so misconfig surfaces) rather than masked by the fallback.
Tested: live web_search/web_extract against search.parallel.ai in keyless and
keyed modes; unit suites for the MCP client, backend selection, and display
labeling; full agent run shows the "Parallel search" label on the free path.
Backend selection ordered firecrawl (including the Nous-managed-tool-gateway
probe) ahead of explicit-credential backends, so a user who had both a
Nous OAuth token AND a TAVILY_API_KEY (or EXA/PARALLEL key) got firecrawl
auto-selected — then the request failed at runtime because the free Nous
tier does not include web search, and there is no fallback to the next
available backend. Explicit user setup lost to a managed convenience.
Reorder so direct-credential backends (tavily > exa > parallel > firecrawl-
direct) are tried first, then the managed-gateway firecrawl probe, then
free-tier fallbacks. Behaviour for users with only Nous OAuth (no
explicit key) is unchanged — firecrawl-via-gateway is still selected.
Behaviour change to flag: a user with BOTH a Nous OAuth token AND a
TAVILY_API_KEY (or EXA/PARALLEL key) now gets the explicit backend
instead of the managed gateway. This matches the principle of least
surprise — a user does not set TAVILY_API_KEY without intent — and
sidesteps the silent runtime failure of the gateway path on free tiers.
Follow-up to #34306. The provider fix made SearXNG *usable* with a
config-only SEARXNG_URL, but tools/web_tools._has_env still read raw
os.getenv, so the backend auto-detect cascade and check_web_api_key
remained blind to it — SearXNG worked when explicitly selected but was
never auto-selected. Route _has_env (and the SearXNG diagnostic print)
through a config-aware _env_value helper mirroring the provider's
_searxng_url(). Fixing the shared helper covers every provider key in
one place. Adds regression tests for config-only auto-detect and
check_web_api_key. See #34290.
