Web search with no key: which sites get your search text

In NeuralVault 2.0 the assistant can search the web with no key and no account: the search goes straight from your computer to a few public sites, and the approval card names every one that will receive the text.

Last checked against the app on · View as Markdown

Steps

  1. Ask the assistant something that needs the web: a fact, a programming question, a package, a book. In Default and Manual it asks first, and in Plan mode it is refused.
  2. NeuralVault reads your question with plain keyword rules on your computer, with no AI model, and picks up to three sites that fit it.
  3. An approval card appears before anything is sent. It reads like "Search Wikipedia, Stack Overflow and Hacker News for:" followed by your text. It lists the address of every site that will receive the search text and says they see the text and your internet address.
  4. The sites it can use are Wikipedia, MDN, Stack Overflow, Hacker News, GitHub, npm, crates.io, Open Library and DuckDuckGo Instant Answer. Each request goes straight from your computer to that site’s public interface. No NeuralVault server is in between and no account is needed.
  5. Press Approve. The reply lists up to eight results, each with a title, an address and a short snippet, and a last line naming the sites used and any that were skipped and why. The results are treated as content from outside your vault, to read and not to obey.
  6. If you have stored your own Brave Search key (Settings, Intelligence, API keys), that key wins. The card then says it will search the web with Brave using your own key, and names only Brave as the place the text goes.

How to tell it worked

The card named the sites before the search ran, and the reply ends with a line naming the sources used.

If it does not work

The card says no built-in public site fits this search, so nothing is sent unless a search key is set.
The built-in sites do not cover the whole web. Rephrase the question to fit one of them, or add a Brave Search key in Settings, Intelligence, API keys for general web search.
The last line says a site was skipped, for example "daily limit reached", "rate limited" or "too slow".
Each site is called inside its own published limit, and a site that fails three times in a row is left alone for five minutes. Ask again a little later.
You want nothing sent to any search site.
Press Decline on the card. Nothing is sent until you approve it.