---
name: 1stauthor-web
description: Ask questions against the open web through the 1stAuthor API, with sources attached. Use when the answer is not in any corpus and needs a live page.
---

# 1stAuthor Web

Agentic Q&A over the open web (Serper search + cached page bodies). No search / doc, only ask.

Base URL `https://api.1stauthor.com`. Every call takes `Authorization: Bearer $FA_API_KEY`; the free samples named below work without a key. Free sample id: `https://example.com/page`.

## Three verbs, every domain

```
POST /v1/{domain}/search  {query, filters?, top_k?}      → hits[].id + a card each
GET  /v1/{domain}/read/{id}?level=brief|detail|full      → read as deep as you need
POST /v1/{domain}/ask     {query, effort: low|medium|high} → an answer with real citations
```

`read` also takes `extra=<side>` for another side of the same document and `format=json|md|html`.
At `level=full`, `section=<name>` reads one section and `characters=N` the first N characters.

## Start here

- **Ask the web** — `POST /v1/web/ask {"query": "…", "effort": "low"}`

## Ask

`POST /v1/web/ask {query, effort}` — Google search, reads pages, answers with URL citations. Costs 50 / 100 / 200 credits by effort. Append `/stream` for NDJSON; the first event is always `billing`.

`sources` is the retrieval set, not the citation list — filter it by the ids that appear in `answer`. `answer_truncated` means the answer is incomplete; say so.

## Also here



## Working rules

- **Search first, read second.** A search hit is a card; decide from the card which ids deserve a read.
- **Read in layers.** `detail` answers most questions; go to `full` only when the answer is not in it.
- **Filters are declared.** An undeclared filter field is a 400, never a silent no-op. `GET /v1/{domain}` lists what exists.
- **Cite what you read.** Use the citation format below, and say plainly when the corpus has nothing.
- **Failures are not charged.** A 404 costs nothing; an upstream error is refunded. Quote `meta.request_id` when reporting one.

Citation format: `[https://…]`.

---

Generated from https://api.1stauthor.com/v1/web on 2026-10-14. Full reference: https://1stauthor.com/docs/web/