web_search

[cometta]

does the agent auto do web search when we use implements like 'mars' , 'cepo', or we need to specify the model 'web_search' ? How does the agent know when to do web search or research using search engine?

[codelion]

The web_search plugin doesn't auto-activate with approaches like mars or cepo. You need to explicitly specify it. For comprehensive research
workflows, use the deep_research plugin which automatically orchestrates web search, URL fetching, and iterative refinement.

Direct Web Search Usage

To use web search explicitly:

# Method 1: Model prefix
model="web_search-gpt-4o-mini"

# Method 2: extra_body
extra_body={"optillm_approach": "web_search"}

# Method 3: Prompt tags
content="<optillm_approach>web_search</optillm_approach> Your query here"

The deep_research plugin (optillm/plugins/deep_research) provides an advanced workflow that automatically combines web search with other capabilities:

What it does:

• Decomposes complex queries into focused sub-questions
• Performs targeted web searches for each sub-query
• Fetches and analyzes content from URLs
• Iteratively refines research through multiple "denoising" cycles
• Generates academic-quality reports with proper citations

Usage:

model="deep_research-gpt-4o-mini"
extra_body={
    "request_config": {
        "max_iterations": 5,  # Research refinement cycles
        "max_sources": 30     # URLs per search
    }
}

You can combine it with other approaches:

Pipeline (&) - Sequential processing:
optillm_approach="web_search&moa" # Search first, then mixture-of-agents synthesis

[cometta]

Regarding the methods—specifically 1, 2, and 3—that you previously shared　parameters extra_body and content, put into the config.yaml for OpenEvolve ? Is a new prompt required for the content to enable web search functionality or can use the system_message parameter defined within config.yaml in openEvovle?

[codelion]

For use in openevolve you can prepend to model name it should work so use web_search-gpt-5-nano instead of gpt-5-nano

[cometta]

web_search&moa , does that mean every iteration , do search first then run moa ? mean every iteration send one google search request?

[codelion]

Yes & is supposed to chain the response of one plugin to the request of another. You can implement something more complex by just using the plugin directly in python. We use web_search in deep_research plugin like that.