Overview

A tool is a capability a model picks up at runtime to get work done (see concepts: tools). The integrations here are the web-search and retrieval providers that back Routeplane’s built-in web search: bring a key for any of them and every model you route through Routeplane gains a web search — even a model with no native search of its own.

How it works

Each provider is a backend of the web_search server tool. You list the ones you have keys for under server_tools.web_search in routeplane.yaml, in preference-and-failover order, and a request opts in per call by declaring {"type":"routeplane:web_search"}. Routeplane runs the search itself and feeds normalized results back to the model — see Web search for the loop, the result shape, and per-request overrides.

# routeplane.yaml — one line per provider you bring a key for
server_tools:
  web_search:
    backends:
      - kind: exa            # EXA_API_KEY
      - kind: tavily         # TAVILY_API_KEY  (failover)

**Need an arbitrary tool, not web search?** Any [MCP](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) server — a database, a file system, your own API — plugs into Routeplane's [MCP gateway](/concepts/tools#the-mcp-gateway). The pages here cover the built-in search providers specifically.