Search1API

Live web research through the bundled Search1API MCP server or the s1 command-line tool.

Choose the available transport

1. Prefer the connected Search1API MCP tools. They may be namespaced by the host, but their final tool names are search, fetch, news, crawl, sitemap, and trending.
2. If the MCP tools are unavailable, check whether s1 is installed and use the matching CLI command.
3. If neither transport is available, ask the user to connect the bundled MCP server or install the CLI:

curl -fsSL https://cli.search1api.com/install.sh | bash

Or via npm:

npm install -g search1api-cli

Do not install software or switch transports when a working Search1API tool is already available. To update an existing CLI install, the user can run s1 update. Only suggest this when a command fails in a version-related way.

The remote MCP server handles authentication through the host's connection flow. If the host reports that authentication is required, ask the user to connect or re-authenticate Search1API.

For CLI authentication, prefer browser login:

s1 login

Manual fallback:

s1 config set-key <your-api-key>

You can also set the environment variable SEARCH1API_KEY.

If a CLI command fails with "command not found" or an auth error, remind the user to install s1 and run s1 login before retrying.

When to use

User intent	MCP tool	CLI fallback
Shares a URL / link → read and summarize	crawl	s1 crawl <url>
Wants to search the web	search	s1 search "<query>"
Wants the full page behind a search result	fetch with its result id	s1 crawl <url>
Wants news	news	s1 news "<query>"
Wants to explore a site's links	sitemap	s1 sitemap <url>
Wants trending topics	trending	s1 trending <service>
Wants to check remaining credits	Not exposed	s1 balance

Dynamic tuning

Adapt parameters to user intent — don't just use defaults:

• Quick lookup ("search for X", "what is X") → -n 5, no crawl
• Deep research ("research X thoroughly", "comprehensive analysis") → -n 15, then crawl top 3–5 results with separate s1 crawl calls
• User specifies a number ("find 10 articles") → match it with -n
• Recency signals ("latest", "recent", "this week") → -t day or -t month
• Domain-specific ("search on Reddit", "find GitHub repos") → -s reddit, -s github, etc.
• Site-scoped ("only from arxiv.org") → --include arxiv.org
• Chinese queries → use google, bing, wechat, or bilibili according to intent

For MCP calls, map the CLI flags above to their schema equivalents: max_results, search_service, crawl_results, include_sites, exclude_sites, and time_range.

Commands

search

s1 search "<query>" [options]

Option	Description	Default
-n, --max-results <N>	Number of results (1–50)	10
-s, --service <engine>	Search engine	google
-c, --crawl <N>	Crawl N results for full content	0
--include <sites...>	Only include these sites
--exclude <sites...>	Exclude these sites
-t, --time <range>	day, month, year
--json	Raw JSON output

Search engines: google, bing, duckduckgo, yahoo, x, reddit, github, youtube, arxiv, wechat, bilibili, imdb, wikipedia

news

s1 news "<query>" [options]

Same options as search. News services: google, bing, duckduckgo, yahoo, hackernews. Default service: bing.

When user asks for breaking/latest news, always add -t day.

crawl

s1 crawl <url>

Extracts clean content from a URL. Use this whenever the user shares a link.

sitemap

s1 sitemap <url>

Returns all discovered links on a URL/domain.

trending

s1 trending <service> [-n <N>]

Services: github, hackernews.

balance

s1 balance

Shows remaining API credits.

Workflows

Deep research

1. Use search (or s1 search "<topic>" -n 15) to get broad results
2. Use fetch with result IDs (or s1 crawl <url>) for the top 3–5 relevant pages
3. Synthesize all gathered content into a coherent answer with source citations

URL summarization

1. s1 crawl <url> → get the page content
2. Summarize or answer questions based on the content

Trending deep dive

1. s1 trending github -n 10 → discover hot topics
2. s1 search "<interesting topic>" -t day → search for details
3. s1 crawl <url> → read full article if needed

Output handling

• CLI commands produce human-readable output by default; add --json for programmatic processing.
• After retrieving results, summarize and synthesize the information instead of dumping raw output.
• Preserve source URLs and cite the relevant pages in the final answer.
• Distinguish facts found in sources from your own inference.

References

• Usage examples — read for additional patterns