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Research Sources

Use these tools to query a specific source, such as ArXiv papers, Google Scholar citations, Wikipedia summaries, PubMed literature, or Hacker News, instead of general web search.

Tools On This Page

Tool Best for
[arxiv] Searching ArXiv and reading the text of selected papers.
[google_scholar] Cross-publisher publication search with citation counts and PDF links.
[wikipedia] One encyclopedia summary per query.
[pubmed] Medical and life-science literature.
[hackernews] Top Hacker News stories and user profiles.

Setup

None of these tools needs an API key or OAuth. Add the tool to an agent's tools list; see Per-Agent Tool Configuration for inline options and include_tools/exclude_tools. Missing Python dependencies install on first use; see Automatic Dependency Installation. For toolkits with an all option, all: true enables every function regardless of the individual enable_* flags. Use Web Search for broader web discovery or news search.

[arxiv]

arxiv searches ArXiv and can download papers to extract their page text.

Option Type Default Notes
enable_search_arxiv boolean true Enable search_arxiv_and_return_articles(query, num_articles=10).
enable_read_arxiv_papers boolean true Enable read_arxiv_papers(id_list, pages_to_read=None).
all boolean false Enable both functions.
download_dir text unset Directory where downloaded PDFs are stored; when unset, PDFs go to an arxiv_pdfs directory inside the installed Agno package.

Search returns JSON with each paper's title, ID, authors, categories, publish date, PDF URL, summary, and comment. read_arxiv_papers() takes ArXiv IDs such as 2103.03404v1, not a search query, and returns the same metadata plus the text of each page; pages_to_read=None reads every page.

agents:
  researcher:
    tools:
      - arxiv:
          download_dir: /srv/mindroom/arxiv

[google_scholar]

google_scholar provides search_google_scholar(query, max_results=None), which returns a JSON list with title, authors, year, venue, abstract, citation count, publication URL, and PDF URL when available.

Option Type Default Notes
max_results number 5 Result cap when the call does not pass max_results.

Google Scholar has no official API, so results are scraped and citation counts, venues, and abstracts are best-effort. Google Scholar rate-limits scrapers, and when it blocks requests the tool returns Google Scholar is currently blocking automated requests. Try again later. Prefer arxiv or pubmed when they cover the topic, and use Google Scholar for cross-publisher coverage or citation counts.

[wikipedia]

wikipedia provides search_wikipedia(query), which returns the Wikipedia summary for the query as JSON. An ambiguous query returns a list of candidate page titles instead of a summary, so retry with one of them or a more specific query.

Option Type Default Notes
auto_suggest boolean true Let Wikipedia suggest or correct the title before lookup; set false for exact-title lookup.
knowledge text unset Has no effect in YAML configuration; leave unset.
all boolean false Has no effect for this toolkit. 
agents:
  researcher:
    tools:
      - wikipedia

[pubmed]

pubmed provides search_pubmed(query, max_results=None) through NCBI E-utilities and returns a JSON list of formatted text results. By default each result has the title, publication year, and a summary truncated to about 200 characters. With results_expanded: true, each result has the full abstract plus the first author, journal, publication type, DOI, PubMed URL, full-text URL when available, keywords, and MeSH terms.

Option Type Default Notes
email text your_email@example.com Contact email sent to NCBI with each request; set a real address.
max_results number unset Result cap when the call does not pass max_results; 10 results when neither sets it.
results_expanded boolean false Return the full abstract and the expanded metadata described above.
enable_search_pubmed boolean true Enable search_pubmed().
all boolean false Enable all functions.
timeout number 30 Per-request HTTP timeout in seconds. 
agents:
  clinician:
    tools:
      - pubmed:
          email: research@example.com
          max_results: 5
          results_expanded: true

[hackernews]

hackernews reads the public Hacker News API. get_top_hackernews_stories(num_stories=10) returns the current top story items, including title, URL, score, and author. get_user_details(username) returns the user's karma, about text, and number of submitted items.

Option Type Default Notes
enable_get_top_stories boolean true Enable get_top_hackernews_stories().
enable_get_user_details boolean true Enable get_user_details().
all boolean false Enable both functions.
timeout number 30 Per-request HTTP timeout in seconds.

The tool returns story metadata only; pair it with Web Scraping & Browser to read the linked pages.