{"title":"Search for Agents field notes","description":"An encyclopedia on search for agents","url":"https://www.searchforagents.com/blog","topics":[{"slug":"web-search","name":"Web Search","description":"Search systems, retrieval pipelines, source selection, grounding, and the evidence agents need from the open web.","order":1,"path":"web-search","directCount":1,"count":1},{"slug":"industry-search","name":"Industry Search","description":"Specialized search across financial, legal, market, and other industry data where provenance, timing, controls, and auditability matter.","order":2,"path":"industry-search","directCount":1,"count":4},{"slug":"finance","name":"Finance","description":"Financial research agents, market and economic data, filings, point-in-time analysis, controls, and audit-ready workflows.","parent":"industry-search","order":1,"path":"industry-search/finance","directCount":1,"count":1},{"slug":"life-sciences","name":"Life Sciences","description":"Literature and clinical-trial search, biomedical evidence, scientific data pipelines, and reviewable research workflows.","parent":"industry-search","order":2,"path":"industry-search/life-sciences","directCount":1,"count":1},{"slug":"paper-search","name":"Paper Search","description":"Scholarly discovery across papers, citations, preprints, repositories, and evidence-rich academic search systems.","parent":"industry-search","order":3,"path":"industry-search/paper-search","directCount":1,"count":1},{"slug":"search-infrastructure","name":"Search Infrastructure","description":"Embedding models, vector and keyword indexes, retrieval engines, rerankers, and evaluation tools behind dependable search for agents.","order":3,"path":"search-infrastructure","directCount":1,"count":1}],"tags":[{"slug":"clinical-trials","name":"Clinical Trials","description":"Registered studies, eligibility, treatment arms, recruitment status, and original trial records.","count":1},{"slug":"context","name":"Context","description":"Selecting and structuring the information an agent needs for its next decision.","count":4},{"slug":"earnings-call","name":"Earnings Call","description":"Earnings-call transcripts, management commentary, and source-backed pre-earnings research.","count":1},{"slug":"evals","name":"Evals","description":"Controlled tests that measure agent behavior, outcomes, and operational quality.","count":0},{"slug":"finance","name":"Finance","description":"Financial filings, market records, and dated evidence for research agents working with company data.","count":2},{"slug":"harnesses","name":"Harnesses","description":"The runtime infrastructure that controls an agent around its underlying model.","count":0},{"slug":"health","name":"Health","description":"Biomedical evidence, regulatory records, and source checks for health-related search claims.","count":1},{"slug":"infrastructure","name":"Infrastructure","description":"Search APIs, retrieval systems, and operational foundations for dependable agent workflows.","count":1},{"slug":"integrations","name":"Integrations","description":"Dependable connections between agent runtimes and external products or services.","count":0},{"slug":"law","name":"Law","description":"Court opinions, legal records, jurisdiction, and dated evidence for legal search questions.","count":1},{"slug":"mcp","name":"MCP","description":"Model Context Protocol concepts and implementation guidance for tool builders.","count":0},{"slug":"orchestration","name":"Orchestration","description":"Coordinating model turns, tools, state, retries, and completion conditions.","count":0},{"slug":"paper-search","name":"Paper Search","description":"Scholarly discovery, paper versions, citation trails, and claim-level checks against original research.","count":1},{"slug":"protocols","name":"Protocols","description":"Shared interfaces and contracts for interoperable agent systems and tools.","count":0},{"slug":"rag","name":"RAG","description":"Retrieval-augmented generation patterns for grounding model output in evidence.","count":0},{"slug":"reliability","name":"Reliability","description":"System properties that keep agent behavior predictable, recoverable, and verifiable.","count":2},{"slug":"search","name":"Search","description":"Query, ranking, and discovery systems that supply agents with relevant evidence.","count":6},{"slug":"tools","name":"Tools","description":"Structured capabilities that let agents inspect, compute, and change external state.","count":3},{"slug":"verification","name":"Verification","description":"Independent checks that establish whether an agent action produced the intended result.","count":3}],"posts":[{"id":"post_paper_search_claim_support","title":"Does the cited paper actually support the claim?","slug":"does-the-cited-paper-actually-support-the-claim","summary":"A citation can lead to the right paper and still misstate its finding. Three source-level checks show how to test a claim against the paper's methods, results, and limits.","directAnswer":"A cited paper supports a claim only when the version cited tests that claim's task or population and reports a result strong enough for the wording used. Semantic Scholar, Valyu, and OpenAlex can locate works and passages; links and citation counts are not proof. Check the original methods, results, and limitations, then cite the precise version and passage or qualify the statement.","topic":"Paper Search","tags":["search","verification","context","paper-search"],"author":"Eliot Reed","publishedAt":"2026-09-25","updatedAt":"2026-09-25","url":"https://www.searchforagents.com/blog/does-the-cited-paper-actually-support-the-claim"},{"id":"post_life_sciences_clinical_trial_search_agent","title":"How to use an agent to find clinical trials for a research question","slug":"how-to-use-an-agent-to-find-clinical-trials","summary":"A worked clinical-trial search: discover candidate studies, narrow by design and recruitment status, and inspect the original registry records.","directAnswer":"Define the condition, intervention, population, status, and geography first. Use a clinical-trials dataset and domain-filtered web search to find study records, then query structured trial metadata. Have the agent assemble a shortlist with registry IDs, phase, eligibility, locations, and open questions; check current recruitment and site details in the original registry.","topic":"Life Sciences","tags":["search","tools","context","clinical-trials"],"author":"Mara Finch","publishedAt":"2026-09-25","updatedAt":"2026-09-25","url":"https://www.searchforagents.com/blog/how-to-use-an-agent-to-find-clinical-trials"},{"id":"post_finance_earnings_research_agent","title":"How to use an agent to research a company before earnings","slug":"how-to-use-an-agent-to-research-a-company-before-earnings","summary":"Build a useful pre-earnings brief with search and filings libraries: find the latest reports, revisit the prior call, and decide what to watch next.","directAnswer":"Give the agent a company, fiscal period, and research question. Use search to discover filing passages, a filing library to locate the latest official report, a finance-search tool for prior earnings context, and web search for investor-relations pages. Ask for a dated brief that separates filed facts, management statements, and open questions.","topic":"Finance","tags":["search","tools","context","finance","earnings-call"],"author":"Mara Finch","publishedAt":"2026-09-25","updatedAt":"2026-09-25","url":"https://www.searchforagents.com/blog/how-to-use-an-agent-to-research-a-company-before-earnings"},{"id":"post_search_api_result_contract","title":"What should a search API return to an agent?","slug":"what-should-a-search-api-return-to-an-agent","summary":"Valyu, Exa, and Parallel return different combinations of links, passages, dates, and diagnostics. Here is the evidence contract an agent needs to build around their results.","directAnswer":"An agent-ready search result needs a resolvable source URL, a relevant passage or page text, available publication metadata, and request-level status. A title or ranking score does not prove a claim. The application must record its own fetch time, check the passage against the original source, and keep publication, retrieval, and effective dates separate.","topic":"Search Infrastructure","tags":["search","tools","reliability","infrastructure"],"author":"Ada Vale","publishedAt":"2026-09-25","updatedAt":"2026-09-25","url":"https://www.searchforagents.com/blog/what-should-a-search-api-return-to-an-agent"},{"id":"post_industry_search_evidence","title":"How to Verify Search Results Across Finance, Biomedical, and Law","slug":"how-to-verify-search-results-across-finance-biomedical-and-law","summary":"A number in a filing, a disease in a paper title, and a court ruling each require a different source check. Three worked cases show where search ends and evidence begins.","directAnswer":"An industry search hit leads to a record; it does not prove every claim inside it. Verify a financial figure in its dated SEC filing and units, a U.S. treatment indication in the FDA's decision for that date, and a legal holding in the court's opinion. Keep the appropriate identifier—the filing accession and document, PMID or DOI for a study, or court docket—alongside the supporting passage and as-of date.","topic":"Industry Search","tags":["search","verification","context","finance","health","law"],"author":"Mara Finch","publishedAt":"2026-09-24","updatedAt":"2026-09-24","url":"https://www.searchforagents.com/blog/how-to-verify-search-results-across-finance-biomedical-and-law"},{"id":"post_trust_web_search_result","title":"When can an agent trust a web search result?","slug":"when-can-an-agent-trust-a-web-search-result","summary":"A 2026 UK holiday calendar says Scotland has nine bank holidays; official records list ten. Follow a search result to its source and learn a five-check method for verifiable answers.","directAnswer":"An AI agent can trust a web search result only as a lead until it opens the source and verifies the exact claim. Check who issued the underlying record, the relevant date and geographic or version scope, and whether the cited passage or data field supports the answer. Record when it was checked; qualify the answer when evidence is stale, conflicting, or underspecified.","topic":"Web Search","tags":["search","verification","reliability"],"author":"Eliot Reed","publishedAt":"2026-09-24","updatedAt":"2026-09-24","url":"https://www.searchforagents.com/blog/when-can-an-agent-trust-a-web-search-result"}]}