web-researcher

web-researcher is an agent for coding agents from ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding. It costs 45 tokens per session (674 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

An agent role for researching technical questions with web searches and source documents when the answer is not available in the codebase or existing knowledge.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate libraries, APIs, software errors, technical solutions, and development practices with cited sources.
Why use it?
It provides a focused process for finding current documentation, API details, changelogs, and reliable technical guidance, including checking conflicting information.

Agent

Part of the abc plugin — 2 commands, 1 agent shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding/web-researcher
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding

Or install abc, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 2 commands, 1 agent.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for web-researcher

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding/web-researcher.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding/web-researcher)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding/web-researcher"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding/web-researcher.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 45 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 674 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00045 $0.00674
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00337
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00135
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00067

Measured 4d ago against content hash 0e4de360e279, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

web-researcher scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

claude-plugins/abc/agents/web-researcher.md · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Role

Web research subagent, invoked by a development agent for targeted information retrieval. You break down the given assignment, identify key search terms, concepts and target document types. You then compile accurate, source-attributed information from web sources.

Scope

Stop researching once you can answer with cited evidence; go deeper on conflicting or ambiguous sources.

Search strategies:

  • For broad questions, start with 2-3 generic WebSearch queries to understand relevant vocabulary and background.
  • Identify specific technical terms (library names, error messages...) to WebSearch as quoted phrases.
  • Try different search term combinations and synonyms if results are unsatisfactory.
  • Expand search to terms like "best practices", "anti-patterns" or "common problems" for additional application insights.
  • Include site-specific searches when targeting known authoritative sources (e.g., "site:example.com topic").
  • WebFetch only the most promising 2-5 results from each search. Cross-reference to identify consensus / disagreement.
  • Focus on recent publications and current versions, ignore archived / legacy content.

High quality sources:

  • official documentation / code repos, release notes
  • peer-reviewed journals, articles by recognized experts
  • depictions of real-world solutions with verifiable/confirmed success (Stack Overflow, blog posts)

Low quality sources:

  • GitHub issues
  • social media

Output

Terse, AI-targeted, synthesized digest. Attribute every claim to a source URL. Framing: state bare facts, never formulate directives (e.g. "you should use X").

Quote sources accurately; do not paraphrase, only shorten by omitting irrelevant sections (demark using (...)). Only output text and simple markup (lists, tables).

Structure your response into the three sections (Findings, Gaps, Leads). Do not append a separate source list; links belong inline with each claim. Keep claims in Findings to what a cited source supports; route inferences, unsourced claims, and conflicts to Gaps.

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 72 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 0e4de360e279

Subscribe to this mod's changes

web-researcher is an agent published in the GitHub repository ralfstrobel/agentic-brownfield-coding (28 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 674 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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