Live web search as a tool

Some questions cannot be answered from the customer's own data: "Is Rotterdam congested this week?", "Has this carrier announced a surcharge?", "Is this consignee on a sanctions list?", "What does the new EU customs rule require?". Giving an agent a web search tool answers them, and opens three new risks: confidential information leaving the estate inside queries, low-quality or stale sources reaching an answer, and web pages that contain instructions aimed at your agent. A production design treats search as a governed integration. It redacts internal identifiers before a query leaves, restricts results to domains the customer has agreed to trust, prefers recent and authoritative sources, deduplicates, keeps fetched text in a delimited untrusted block, cites every claim with a URL and date, logs what was sent and received, caches sensibly, caps spend, and uses a licensed feed instead of search wherever the answer matters legally or financially.

Key takeaways:

• The query is data leaving the estate. Redact before you search.
• Allow-lists beat block-lists for enterprise answers; widen them deliberately.
• Fresh is not the same as authoritative. Score sources on both.
• Fetched pages are untrusted input. Never let them steer tools or writes.
• For sanctions, tariffs and regulatory status, buy or subscribe to the authoritative feed; use search to find what to read, not as the record.