Five ways to get something off the web, cheapest first.
Most tools reach for the most expensive retrieval method every time. This picks the cheapest route that will actually answer the question, and steps up only when it has to.
| Tier | Route | Time | Cost | Used when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Training data | instant | free | The answer is not time-sensitive |
| 2 | WebFetch | seconds | free | A specific URL on a cooperative site |
| 3 | Firecrawl API | seconds | 1 credit | JS-heavy sites, or WebFetch failed |
| 4 | Codex + small model | 1-3 min | free | Targeted current-info questions |
| 5 | Codex + search | 20-30 min | free | Broad investigation, confirm first |
- Tiers 1 and 2 need nothing at all. You can use this immediately.
FIRECRAWL_API_KEYfor tier 3.- The Codex CLI, signed in, for tiers 4 and 5.
These are real things that cost time, written down so they cost you none.
- Tier 5 can take half an hour. The skill is written to confirm with you before starting one, rather than disappearing for thirty minutes.
Fully portable, and it degrades tier by tier on its own. If you only want to read one skill here to see how graceful fallback should work, read this one.
This is a folder of markdown instructions plus its helper scripts. Any AI that can read instructions from a file can use it. Pick your tool:
Claude Code
cp -r web-intelligence ~/.claude/skills/Or drop it in <your-project>/.claude/skills/ to keep it project-local.
Codex, Antigravity, Cursor, or anything else that reads local files
Put the folder anywhere in your project and point your agent at it. In Codex, adding
a line to AGENTS.md is enough:
The web-intelligence skill lives in ./web-intelligence. Read web-intelligence/SKILL.md before using it.
Claude.ai or another browser chat
Paste the contents of SKILL.md into the chat. The tiers that need
no keys will work; the ones that shell out will not.
Anything else
SKILL.md is plain markdown with YAML frontmatter (name, description). If your
platform rejects unknown frontmatter keys, delete the model: line and it will load.
Do not blindly trust skills you download from the internet, including mine. This one ships scripts that run on your machine. Check it first, which your AI can do in about a minute:
Read every file in this folder, including the scripts. Tell me plainly: does anything
here send my data anywhere, contact the internet, run something I would not expect, or
ask for credentials? Quote the exact lines that made you say so. If it is clean, say so.
If the answer worries you, do not run it.
This is a real working skill, pulled out of a private knowledge vault and
anonymised for release. It is not a demo. The Session History section inside
SKILL.md keeps the bugs and dead ends found while building it, because those
are usually the most useful part.
MIT. Do what you like with it.
Built by JP Pieterse.