Brave API Search v4.2.0 — Significant Update

Real-time web search, autosuggest, spellcheck, and AI-powered answers using the official Brave Search API. Four tools:

• brave_search — web results with titles, URLs, descriptions, optional AI summary
• brave_suggest — query autosuggestions as users type with optional rich metadata
• brave_spellcheck — spell correction and "Did you mean?" suggestions
• brave_answers — AI-grounded answers with inline citations powered by live web search | NEW — v4.2.0: Full entity extraction via enable-entities flag

Setup

Set your Brave API keys in a local .env file (recommended):

# .env (do not commit)
BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY=your_key_here
BRAVE_ANSWERS_API_KEY=your_key_here
AUTOSUGGEST_API_KEY=your_key_here   # optional, for autosuggest only
BRAVE_SPELLCHECK_API_KEY=your_key_here   # optional, for spellcheck only

Get your keys at: https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com

Key routing:

• brave_search → BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY
• brave_answers → BRAVE_ANSWERS_API_KEY
• brave_suggest → AUTOSUGGEST_API_KEY → BRAVE_AUTOSUGGEST_API_KEY → BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY (tries in order)
• brave_spellcheck → BRAVE_SPELLCHECK_API_KEY → BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY (tries in order)

Note: brave_answers uses streaming by default. Streaming is required for citations, entities, and research mode.

When to Use This Skill

Use brave_search when:

• Searching for current information, news, or recent events
• Looking up documentation or technical references
• Need ranked results with URLs to follow up on
• Want an AI summary of search results

Use brave_suggest when:

• Power autocomplete in search interfaces
• Help users formulate better queries faster
• Need query completions as users type
• Want rich metadata (titles, descriptions, images) for suggestions

Use brave_answers when:

• Need a synthesized answer with cited sources
• Researching topics that benefit from multiple sources
• Want AI-grounded responses with inline citations
• Deep research mode needed (multi-search)

Don't use this skill for:

• Questions already answered from context or memory
• Tasks that don't require external information

Tools

brave_search

Web search returning ranked results with titles, URLs, and descriptions.

brave_search --query "latest Node.js release" --count 5
brave_search --query "TypeScript generics" --extra-snippets true
brave_search --query "current weather Copenhagen" --freshness pd
brave_search --query "React Server Components" --summary true

Parameters:

• query (required) — Search query, supports operators: site:, "exact phrase", -exclude
• count — Results to return (1-20, default: 10)
• country — 2-letter country code (default: us)
• freshness — Date filter: pd (24h), pw (7 days), pm (31 days), py (1 year)
• extra-snippets — Include up to 5 extra text excerpts per result (default: false)
• summary — Fetch Brave AI summarizer result (default: false)
• offset — Pagination offset for next page results

Returns: Formatted list of results with title, URL, description, optional AI summary, and a hint for next page if more_results_available.

brave_suggest

Query autosuggest API providing intelligent query autocompletion as users type.

brave_suggest --query "hello"
brave_suggest --query "pyt" --count 5 --country US
brave_suggest --query "einstein" --rich true

Parameters:

• query (required) — Partial query to get suggestions for
• count — Number of suggestions (1-10, default: 5)
• country — 2-letter country code (default: US)
• rich — Include enhanced metadata: titles, descriptions, images, entity detection (default: false, requires paid Autosuggest plan)

Returns: List of query suggestions, optionally with rich metadata. Results are cached for 60 seconds.

Best Practices:

• Implement debouncing (150-300ms) to avoid excessive API calls as users type
• Load suggestions asynchronously without blocking the UI

brave_spellcheck

Spell checking and query correction for search queries.

brave_spellcheck --query "articifial inteligence"
brave_spellcheck --query "hello" --country US

Parameters:

• query (required) — Query to check for spelling errors
• country — 2-letter country code (default: US)

Returns: "Did you mean:" suggestion, or confirms no correction needed. Uses dedicated BRAVE_SPELLCHECK_API_KEY if available, falls back to BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY.

brave_answers

AI-powered answers grounded in live web search with inline citations.

brave_answers --query "How does React Server Components work?"
brave_answers --query "Compare Postgres vs MySQL for OLAP" --enable-research true
brave_answers --query "Latest Python release notes" --enable-citations true
brave_answers --query "Who is Albert Einstein" --enable-entities true

Parameters:

• query (required) — Question or topic to research
• country — Target country for search context (default: us)
• enable-citations — Include inline source citations (default: true)
• enable-research — Multi-search deep research mode (default: false)
• enable-entities — Include entity information in responses (default: false, streaming required)
• stream — Enable streaming output (default: true — required for citations/entities/research)

Returns: AI answer with cited sources extracted from the response, plus token usage and cost breakdown.

⚠️ Citations, entities, and research mode require streaming (--stream true, which is the default). If you disable streaming with --stream false, citations and entity data will not be available.

Streaming mode output:

• Text streams progressively to stdout
• Entities streamed inline as <enum_item> tags are parsed
• Entities mentioned section printed at the end (v4.2.0)
• Sources printed at the end (sorted by citation number)
• Token usage and cost breakdown included

Non-streaming fallback: Use --stream false for simpler output at the cost of losing citations and entity data.

Pricing & Limits

Brave pricing is credit-based and can change. Do not assume a fixed free request count.

Current public guidance (verify in Brave dashboard/docs before production use):

• Monthly trial credits may be offered (e.g. $5 in monthly credits)
• Search and Answers consume credits differently
• Rich suggestions require a paid Autosuggest plan
• Answers may also include token-based costs
• QPS limits depend on your plan tier

Always check your live limits and usage in:

• https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com
• https://brave.com/search/api/

Technical Details

Architecture

The skill uses a shared utils.js module containing:

• parseArgs() — CLI argument parser
• fetchWithRetry() — fetch with exponential backoff retry on 429 and 5xx
• createCache() — in-memory TTL cache (used by brave_suggest)

brave_search.js

The core search script with the following optimizations:

• Parallel summary fetch: When --summary is enabled, the summary key is extracted from the search response and fetched in parallel with the search results
• Pagination hint: Response includes a hint for the next page offset when more_results_available is true
• Rate limit handling: Retries on 429 (honors Retry-After header) and 5xx (exponential backoff)

brave_answers.js v4.2.0

The AI answers script supports two modes:

• Streaming (default): Progressive output with real-time entity extraction, deduplicated citations, token usage, and cost breakdown
• Non-streaming: Full citation and entity extraction from batch response via parseCitations() and parseEntities()

Key changes in v4.2.0:

• Entity extraction: Streaming mode parses <enum_item> tags incrementally — entity names are streamed inline as they are parsed, and a consolidated Entities mentioned section is printed at the end with URL and citation count per entity
• Citation deduplication: Duplicate source URLs are deduplicated so each source is cited only once (sorted by citation number)
• Non-streaming mode (v4.2.0): Full parseCitations() and parseEntities() applied to the batch response content, so citations and entities are extracted even without streaming

brave_suggest.js

The autosuggest script with the following optimizations:

• In-memory cache: 60-second TTL cache keyed by query|count|country|rich — deduplicates rapid successive calls
• Key fallback chain: AUTOSUGGEST_API_KEY → BRAVE_AUTOSUGGEST_API_KEY → BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY

brave_answers streaming

When streaming is enabled (stream: true):

• SSE chunks are parsed in real-time
• Citations are collected and printed at end (sorted by citation number)
• Entity items (<enum_item>) are parsed incrementally — streamed inline and collected for the Entities mentioned section
• Usage block (<usage>) parsed and displayed with token counts and total cost

Security & Packaging Notes

• This skill only calls Brave official endpoints under https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1.
• It requires BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY and BRAVE_ANSWERS_API_KEY (keep them in .env, not inline in commands/chats).
• Optionally accepts AUTOSUGGEST_API_KEY or BRAVE_AUTOSUGGEST_API_KEY for autosuggest.
• It does not request persistent/system privileges and does not modify system config.
• All scripts are Node.js 18+ native (no external dependencies).