I built a keyless web search package for Laravel AI agents (no API keys, no per-query cost)

Description and use

The laravel-agent-web-search package adds keyless web search to Laravel AI agents without API keys or per‑query costs, using a local search engine.

Problem

Laravel AI agents lack native web search on many providers, and hosted search APIs add keys, quotas, and costs.

Outcome

Agents can now perform web search, fetch pages, and conduct research without external API keys or costs, with measurable performance (3s search deadline, ~1.7s for two pages).

Workflow

• Install package via composer: composer require ssekyanzijackson/laravel-agent-web-search
• Run installation command: php artisan web-search:install
• Import tools: use AgentWebSearch\Tools\{WebSearchTool, WebFetchTool, ResearchTool}
• Add tools to agent: public function tools(): array { return [new WebSearchTool, new WebFetchTool, new ResearchTool]; }

Evidence

Laravel's AI SDK made building agents genuinely pleasant, but the moment my agent needed the web I hit the same wall everyone hits: provider-native search only exists on some providers (my production model has none), and every hosted search API is another key, another quota, another line on the bill.

Source

So I wrapped a local keyless search engine into three ordinary Laravel AI tools and published it:

Source

No key, no quota, no per-query cost. If you want paid coverage later you can point the engine at Tavily, Brave, Exa or Serper with automatic fallback, without touching your code.

Source

Honest caveats, because a launch post without them is marketing: the engine is a separate AGPL install (nothing of it is bundled), it is a young project, engine reach depends on your host's network (run donsetch doctor to see which engines your server can reach), and on a tiny VPS heavy parallel research leans on CPU.

Source