Web search and pages
When your catalog and the app's own knowledge cannot answer, the assistant may search the web and read a page, for example the page of a node pack or of a model. "Used only when your catalog cannot answer. Answers from the web carry their link." Both are on by default, and both can be turned off.
How it works
- Search. OpenAI and Anthropic, on their official address, search with their own web search. Google Gemini 3 models do too. Every other case (your own server, an older Gemini model, a proxy address) uses a search the app makes itself from this computer, on DuckDuckGo.
- Reading a page. The app opens the page from this computer, takes its text and gives it to the model. It reads at most 10 MB of a page and gives the model at most 60 000 characters of its text; a longer page is marked as cut. "These protect against huge or hostile pages and apply to web pages only, never to your graph or chat."
- Safety. The app does not open addresses on this computer or in your home network, nor your ComfyUI or MCP server, and only the usual web ports. The text of a page is treated as data, never as instructions. The pages the provider's own search names are not opened by the app's page reader; a link the assistant found is opened without its query part.
- Cost. The provider's own search is billed separately: about $10 per 1000 searches for OpenAI and Anthropic, $14 for Google.
- In the conversation it shows as "searched the web for “…”" and "read civitai.com" under What the assistant looked at. An explanation the assistant wrote from the web gets the badge Assistant and its link (Source, Copy link). A link in an answer shows its words; a click copies its address and opens nothing.
How to turn it off
Settings ▸ Assistant ▸ Behavior: Allow web search, Allow reading web pages. Then Save settings.
What can go wrong
- The search engine may ask for a human check; then the search fails and the assistant says so instead of pretending nothing was found.
- A model with a small context window has little room for a page; see The context window.
Other internet use
Separate from the assistant: a model card's Find on the internet, and Settings ▸ Privacy ▸ Look up models on the internet during sync. See The model card.