Distinguish webFetch and webSearch

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Nov 29, 2025 by tjx666 Closed Jan 14, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What feature would you like to see?

<img width="560" height="393" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1fc48e41-f729-4309-972b-739dc7ce903e" />

This should be WebFetch('https://www.better-auth.com/docs/plugins/username'), but it displays 🌐 Searched: better-auth username plugin docs, which confuses me.

For now, there is only one Web.run tool, and the UI always show Search, which is very confused.

Why not separate it to two tools: WebSearch and WebFetch?

My current feeling is that it's not WebFetch('https://aaa.com') but rather WebSearch('site: https://aaa.com')

Additional information

codex-cli 0.63.0

config.toml:

file_opener = "cursor"
model = "gpt-5.1-codex-max"
model_reasoning_effort = "xhigh"
model_reasoning_summary = "detailed"
model_reasoning_summary_format = "experimental"
model_verbosity = "high"

[features]
unified_exec = true
streamable_shell = true
rmcp_client = true
apply_patch_freeform = true
view_image_tool = true
web_search_request = true
ghost_commit = true

[notice]
hide_gpt5_1_migration_prompt = true
"hide_gpt-5.1-codex-max_migration_prompt" = true
hide_rate_limit_model_nudge = true

View original on GitHub ↗

2 Comments

etraut-openai contributor · 7 months ago

This feature request hasn't received enough upvotes, so I'm going to close it.

TomasHubelbauer · 6 months ago

This is very relevant in regards to #8389 as well. I still don't know how to determine whether Codex actually made a web fetch or is just making things up - in the past it was completely inept when it came to web fetching and I want to determine whether that's still the case.