/web-access

name: web-access
description: Use whenever a task needs something from the live web — search the web or the news, read a URL, map or crawl a site, pull structured fields from a page, or get data from a platform (X, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Xiaohongshu, Amazon, app stores, Google Maps, papers). Picks the right tool for the job, starts free, and lets treg fall back to the next vendor when one fails. No local scrapers, browsers or cookies.

Web access

One treg key reads the web: free search and page fetch first, and the rest of the catalog behind them for the pages and platforms a free fetch can't reach. Nothing runs on this machine: no browser, no cookies, no burner accounts. treg calls the vendor and, on a routed job, tries the next one when a vendor comes back empty or blocked.

Runs on treg. If it isn't set up (`treg --version` fails), read https://treg.to/llms.txt and follow it to install and sign in, then come back here.

Pick the job

Know the URL?             → read it (free first)
Need to find pages?       → search (free) → read the 3–5 best results
A platform object?        → never scrape its HTML: use the platform's job
  (post, profile, video,     structured fields, fewer tokens, survives redesigns
   product, review, place)
A whole site?             → map it → read only the pages that matter
Need typed fields?        → structured extract with a JSON schema or an instruction
Need it recent or dated?  → news search, not web search

Free first

Web search and page reads are free through TinyFish:

• `treg call treg.web.search --data '{"q":"…"}' --header 'X-Treg-Route-Prefer: tinyfish'`
• `treg call treg.web.extract --data '{"url":"…"}' --header 'X-Treg-Route-Prefer: tinyfish'`

Both are routed: when TinyFish comes back empty or blocked, treg tries the next vendor (Crawl4AI, AnyAPI, …). You pay the vendor that answered plus any vendor before it that bills a miss (`treg catalog get` says how many do); `X-Treg-Route-Max-Cost` caps the walk. To read up to ten URLs in one free call, call `tinyfish.web.fetch` directly with `{"urls":[…]}`; it does not fall back.

Platform data (social, stores, reviews, maps) is not free: cents or fractions of a cent a call. Say so before a batch.

Jobs

Search the catalog for the words in the second column. The vendors are examples of who answers today; take whatever the catalog ranks best now.

| You want | Search the catalog for | Example vendors | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Web results | `treg.web.search` | TinyFish, Exa, Perplexity, Keenable | free with the TinyFish header | | A page as markdown | `treg.web.extract` | TinyFish, Crawl4AI, AnyAPI | free first; blocked pages fall back | | Typed fields from a page | `treg.web.extract.structured` | | send `url` plus a `schema` and/or `instruction` | | Every URL on a site | `treg.web.map` | AnyAPI, Firecrawl, Tavily | add `q` to rank URLs for a topic | | Many pages of a site | "crawl a website" | Firecrawl, Crawl4AI, Olostep | map first when you need only some pages | | Recent news | `treg.web.search.news` | Serper, DataForSEO, Exa | dated results | | Papers | "search research publications" | TinyFish, Exa, Serper | | | X, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook | "x search posts", "linkedin company posts", "reddit subreddit posts", "tiktok video comments", … | TikHub, ScrapeCreators, HarvestAPI, AnyAPI | profiles, posts, comments, reactions as fields | | YouTube, Bilibili | "youtube video comments", "youtube search videos" | Crawl4AI, TikHub, ScrapeCreators | | | Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Weibo | "xiaohongshu user notes", "douyin search videos" | TikHub, JustOneAPI | | | Stores | "amazon product detail", "amazon search products", "walmart search", "ebay search" | JustOneAPI, SerpAPI, Crawl4AI | price, rating, reviews as fields | | Reviews | "app store reviews", "google play app", "trustpilot reviews", "glassdoor reviews", "google maps reviews" | Crawl4AI, Bright Data, LiteScrape | | | Places | "google maps search", "local results" | DataForSEO, SerpAPI | | | Google results as Google shows them | "google serp organic" | DataForSEO, Serper | ranks, snippets, features |

Finding the endpoint

The catalog changes every week, so never trust a remembered endpoint id.

1. `treg catalog search "<the job in plain words>"`, not a vendor name. 2. Prefer a routed `treg.*` endpoint when there is one: the team's own keys first, then vendors in order, and most misses are free. 3. `treg catalog get <id>`: the price, the vendors behind a routed job, and each one's measured **hit rate** (it found something), not just works (it returned 200), and speed. 4. One small call first. Read `_treg.served_by`, `_treg.tried` and the reported charge, then scale. 5. Nothing fits: `treg catalog request "<what is missing>"`.

Steering a routed job

Options ride as headers, never in the body:

| Header | Use it to | | --- | --- | | `X-Treg-Route-Prefer: <vendor>` | try that vendor first (free TinyFish, or the one that worked last time) | | `X-Treg-Route-Exclude: <vendor>` | skip a vendor that gave you bad answers | | `X-Treg-Route-Max-Cost: <usd>` | cap one call; uncapped, a miss can walk up to $1 of vendors | | `X-Treg-Route-Waterfall: 0` | stop at the first miss when only one vendor's answer will do |

Batches: always send a `Max-Cost`.

Habits that save money and tokens

• Read pages as markdown, and cut navigation and footers before they reach the context.
• A platform job returns fields; a scraped page of the same thing costs several times the tokens.
• Search, then read only the results you need. Never read a whole site to answer one question.
• Keep the source URL next to every fact you hand back.

Recipes

• **Research a company:** web search → read its site, pricing and docs pages → news search for the last

90 days → its LinkedIn company profile.

• **Read a docs site into context:** map the site with `q` set to the topic → read the top pages.