anysearch | Hermes Marketplace

hermes-anysearch

AnySearch web search and content extraction for
Hermes Agent, plus two real-time
fallback chains that keep the web tools working when a primary backend fails.

| Provider | What it does | Select with |
|---|---|---|
| anysearch | AnySearch alone (REST /v1/search + /v1/extract) | web.backend or per-capability keys |
| exa-anysearch | Exa first → AnySearch on any Exa failure | web.search_backend |
| firecrawl-anysearch | Firecrawl first → AnySearch on any Firecrawl failure | web.extract_backend |

Why the chains

Hermes' built-in runtime rescue only rescues a failed call to its keyless
anonymous ring, which is heavily throttled. AnySearch's free tier is
1,000 requests/day (20 QPS with a key; anonymous access works without one),
which makes it a strong second backend:

Search: Exa's free credits drain under burst use; the chain retries Exa on
every call, so a reset quota is picked up automatically with no manual switch-back.
Extract: in a batch replay of 20 URLs that had previously failed on
Firecrawl, most failures were backend-level (unconfigured, 60s scrape
timeouts) rather than hard pages, and AnySearch recovered 65% of them.
Firecrawl stays first because it clears anti-bot walls AnySearch cannot
(npmjs, WeChat, z-lib).

Install

Clone into your Hermes plugin directory:

git clone https://github.com/<owner>/hermes-anysearch "$HERMES_HOME/plugins/anysearch"

Enable the plugin (Hermes requires explicit opt-in for user plugins):
```
hermes plugins enable anysearch
```
Optional but recommended — add an AnySearch API key. A free key raises the
quota to 1,000 requests/day; get one at
https://www.anysearch.com/console/api-keys.
```
# $HERMES_HOME/.env
ANYSEARCH_API_KEY=as_sk_...
```

Point the web tools at the chains (or pick them via hermes tools):

# $HERMES_HOME/config.yaml
web:
  search_backend: exa-anysearch
  extract_backend: firecrawl-anysearch

Fully restart Hermes Desktop — plugins and config load at startup.

Multiple profiles

Plugins are per-profile ($HERMES_HOME/plugins), so naively this directory
would need a copy per profile and drift. Instead, make every other profile a
directory junction (Windows) or symlink (Unix) to the single checkout:

python scripts/link-to-profiles.py           # create/repair links
python scripts/link-to-profiles.py --verify  # check only

Hermes' plugin scanner follows junctions/symlinks, so one checkout serves every
profile. Note that plugins.enabled and .env stay per-profile: a new profile
still needs hermes plugins enable anysearch and its own ANYSEARCH_API_KEY.

Notes from testing against the live API

/v1/search returns both snippet and content, but content is an
abstract. With format: "markdown" it becomes a structured digest (roughly
2x the default length), never the full page — full text requires
/v1/extract. This provider requests format: "markdown" and maps content
to the result description.
POST /v1/extract is the official REST endpoint and measured about 2x faster
than the MCP extract tool (0.45s vs 0.91s for the same page). The MCP path
is kept only as a fallback; its result.content[].text is a JSON string
that needs a second parse.
With an Authorization header present but the key invalid, the API returns
401/403 — it does not silently fall back to anonymous.

Tests

Run with the Hermes venv Python:

<hermes-agent>/venv/Scripts/python tests/test_provider.py    # providers + simulated failover
<hermes-agent>/venv/Scripts/python tests/test_chains.py      # extract chain
<hermes-agent>/venv/Scripts/python tests/test_e2e.py normal  # through tools.web_tools
<hermes-agent>/venv/Scripts/python tests/test_e2e.py broken  # real failures → rescue

License

MIT

README from the reviewed commit 43c1757; it updates when the author re-pins.