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Pi Extensions & Skills

Web search & research

Out of the box Pi can’t browse the web. These extensions add web search, URL fetching, and richer research so the model can ground its answers in current information.

Alternatives

Section titled “Alternatives”

1. pi-web-access (nicobailon)

Section titled “1. pi-web-access (nicobailon)”

A broad web toolkit: web search, URL fetching, GitHub repo cloning, PDF extraction, YouTube video understanding, and local video analysis.

Terminal window
pi install npm:pi-web-access

Benefits

  • The most popular all-in-one option — covers most research needs.
  • Goes beyond search: PDFs, repos, and video.

Drawbacks

  • Large surface area; you may only use a fraction of it.
  • Some features depend on external API keys/services.

2. @juicesharp/rpiv-web-tools

Section titled “2. @juicesharp/rpiv-web-tools”

Web search and fetch with pluggable providers — Brave, Tavily, Serper, Exa, Jina, Firecrawl, SearXNG, and Ollama — so you can choose your search backend.

Terminal window
pi install npm:@juicesharp/rpiv-web-tools

Benefits

  • Provider-agnostic: pick the search engine you already pay for (or self-host SearXNG).
  • Part of the broader rpiv-* family that shares conventions.

Drawbacks

  • You must configure a provider and its API key.
  • More moving parts than a single-provider tool.
Section titled “3. @ollama/pi-web-search”

Web search and fetch backed by Ollama’s web search and fetch APIs — a good fit if you’re already in the Ollama ecosystem.

Terminal window
pi install npm:@ollama/pi-web-search

Benefits

  • Simple, single-provider setup for Ollama users.
  • Maintained by the Ollama team.

Drawbacks

  • Tied to Ollama’s web APIs.
  • Fewer extras than the broader toolkits.

Which should I pick?

Section titled “Which should I pick?”
  • Want everything in one package: pi-web-access.
  • Want to choose/self-host your search backend: @juicesharp/rpiv-web-tools.
  • Already use Ollama: @ollama/pi-web-search.