brave-search - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: brave-search description: Web search and content extraction via Brave Search API. Use for searching documentation, facts, or any web content. Lightweight, no browser required.

Brave Search

Headless web search and content extraction using Brave Search. No browser required.

Setup

Run once before first use:

cd ~/Projects/agent-scripts/skills/brave-search
npm ci

Needs env: BRAVE_API_KEY.

Search

./search.js "query"                    # Basic search (5 results)
./search.js "query" -n 10              # More results
./search.js "query" --content          # Include page content as markdown
./search.js "query" -n 3 --content     # Combined

Extract Page Content

./content.js https://example.com/article

Fetches a URL and extracts readable content as markdown.

Output Format

--- Result 1 ---
Title: Page Title
Link: https://example.com/page
Snippet: Description from search results
Content: (if --content flag used)
  Markdown content extracted from the page...

--- Result 2 ---
...

When to Use

Searching for documentation or API references
Looking up facts or current information
Fetching content from specific URLs
Any task requiring web search without interactive browsing

Related Search Tools

brave-search is for quick lookups. For deeper research:

Tool	Use When	Example
valyu	Recursive turn-based research	`valyu research "query" --turns 5`
deep-research	Multi-query synthesis	`deep-research "query" --deep`
lev-research	Multi-perspective analysis	`lev-research "query" --template=tech_assessment`
lev-find	Local + external unified	`lev find "query" --scope=research`
tavily-search	AI-optimized snippets	`tavily-search "query" --deep`
exa-plus	Neural search, GitHub, papers	`exa search "query" --category=research`
grok-research	Real-time X/Twitter	`grok-research "query"`
firecrawl	Content extraction	`firecrawl scrape <url>`

When to use brave-search:

✅ Quick documentation lookups
✅ API references
✅ Fast fact-checking
❌ Deep research (use deep-research or valyu)
❌ Multi-perspective (use lev-research)
❌ Social sentiment (use grok-research)

See skill://lev-research for comprehensive research workflows.