Open-Web Acquisition — web_search / web_fetch

Two tools front the sandbox open-web engine (decepticon.sandbox_web):

• web_search(query, provider="duckduckgo") — keyword OSINT over an allowlisted search provider. Target-EXEMPT (it hits the provider, not the target), so no engagement scope is required. Use it to DISCOVER: the org's public footprint, exposed tech / version-specific advisories, leaked references, doc/changelog/status pages, third-party subdomains and assets named in the wild.
• web_fetch(url, selector="", device="auto") — read ONE page's content, escalating past WAF / anti-bot blocks. RoE target-gated (the url must be in plan/roe.json scope) and SSRF-safe. Prefer it over curl-in-bash whenever a public page is blocked, returns a challenge, or is JS-rendered.

Typical flow: web_search to find a URL → web_fetch to read it.

How web_fetch escalates (you do NOT drive this — the engine does)

web_fetch runs an escalation ladder inside the sandbox automatically:

1. Phase 0 — official public APIs. Reddit / X(Twitter) / YouTube URLs are auto-routed to their no-auth endpoints (Reddit .rss, X tweet-result/oEmbed/ syndication, YouTube yt-dlp) BEFORE any WAF grid. Just pass the normal page URL; a Phase-0 win shows verdict with profile=phase0:<platform>.
2. curl_cffi TLS-impersonation grid. Real Safari/Chrome/Firefox JA3/JA4 fingerprints × URL transforms (mobile subdomain, …) × referer strategies, tried exhaustively. This clears most WAFs (Cloudflare TLS, F5, AWS WAF, …).
3. Headless browser tier. For JS challenges the curl grid can't clear (Cloudflare Turnstile, Akamai Bot Manager, DataDome), a local headless Chromium with stealth runs. There is no Playwright-MCP in the sandbox — this local browser IS the final rung. If it still fails, that is a real wall.

You never pick a TLS profile, transform, or browser — the engine detects the WAF and chooses. Your only knobs are selector and device.

R2 — HTTP 200 is NOT success

The engine validates every response (4-layer: challenge markers / body size / cookie sensor / your selector). A 200 that is actually a challenge or empty SPA shell is reported as a FAILURE, not content. Trust the tool's verdict / [web_fetch OK|FAILED] line, never a raw status. Always pass a selector (e.g. article, #content, [class*='product']) when you know the content marker — it upgrades a "looks clean" guess into proven success.

R6 — a give-up is NOT exhaustion (the discipline that matters)

When web_fetch returns [web_fetch FAILED] it includes stop_reason= and grid_exhausted=. Do not declare a page unreadable on the first FAILED.

• TERMINAL walls — stop_reason is auth_required (login/paywall) or not_found (404). These are real: record it and move on; retrying cannot help.
• Everything else (challenge, blocked, rate_limited, or a non-exhausted grid) still has escalation left:
  • rate_limited (429) is NOT terminal — back off, then retry.
  • Retry once with device="mobile" (mobile TLS + m. subdomain often walk past a desktop block) and/or a precise selector.
  • Only after a terminal stop_reason may you honestly conclude the page is unreachable.

This is the whole point of the engine: the cheap path failing is the start of escalation, not permission to stop.

RoE & OSINT boundary

• web_search is OSINT → not scope-gated (allowlisted provider egress only).
• web_fetch is target-gated → the url must be in plan/roe.json scope; an out-of-scope fetch returns ROE_REFUSED. SSRF-blocked (internal/metadata/ private) hosts are refused regardless.
• Reading public pages is OSINT, not exploitation. Use bash/http_request for ACTIVE probing of in-scope target infrastructure; use web_fetch to READ pages (the target's own blocked/JS pages, or in-scope public assets).

Platform fast-paths (handled by Phase 0 — just pass the URL)

GitHub/npm/PyPI return structured JSON (great for supply-chain / source recon) instead of HTML — just pass the normal page URL and the engine routes it.

For keyword discovery on a platform (e.g. "what's said about X on Reddit"), web_search("site:reddit.com <topic>") first, then web_fetch the result URLs.