Agent Reach installed — multi-backend web-access layer for the fleet

decision Sun Jul 05 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) agent-toolingdecisionweb-accessmcp

Agent Reach installed (2026-07-05)

Decision

Adopt Agent Reach v1.5.0 as the workspace's internet-access capability layer. Sits below the existing MCP web-search stack.

Why (vs alternatives)

• vs manual per-platform CLI hunt — 15 platforms, one installer, multi-backend fallback per platform, doctor command that tells you what's routing where. That work is exactly the kind of "someone else already did it" community-first per community-packages-first.
• vs pure MCP servers — Agent-Reach coexists with them (both installed). MCP servers handle chat-driven search; Agent-Reach handles shell-tool platform-native access (yt-dlp captions, gh CLI, bili-cli, OpenCLI browser session). Different layers of the same problem.
• vs building our own — spec is <3 months old, upstream ships a version every few weeks. First-mover per okf-ecosystem-first-mover — adopt fast, contribute back if something breaks.

Card / cost gate

• MIT, Python, no card.
• All upstream tools it installs are free-tier or free-forever.
• Optional $1/mo residential proxy for server deployment only — corp laptop doesn't need it.

What's active (6/15)

Web (Jina Reader), GitHub (via gh CLI), YouTube (yt-dlp), RSS (feedparser), Exa Search (mcporter MCP), V2EX (public API), Bilibili-basic (search API). Full status via agent-reach doctor.

What's deferred

• Twitter, Reddit, XiaoHongShu, FB, IG, Xueqiu, XYZ Podcast, LinkedIn — all cookie-gated or account-gated. Install on demand via agent-reach install --channels=<name> when a specific use case actually needs them. Skip for now to avoid burning cookies on channels we're not using.

Constraints honored

• No card — ✅
• No workspace pollution — ✅ (all configs live in ~/.agent-reach/, ~/.mcporter/, ~/.claude/skills/agent-reach/)
• Fleet parity — ✅ (skill installs into both ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/, discoverable by every agent that reads either dir)
• Corp AV — ⚠️ yt-dlp.exe blocked, workaround via python -m yt_dlp documented in service concept

Rollback

agent-reach uninstall && pipx uninstall agent-reach && npm uninstall -g mcporter && uv tool uninstall yt-dlp. Removes every artefact. Zero state left in workspace.