Perform web or news search using Bing search engine. Supports both general web search and news search modes.
AI agents call web_search to retrieve information from Spider MCP without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
Web search is a retrieval operation with no side effects. It queries the Bing search engine and returns results. There is no data modification, code execution, or resource destruction. This aligns with the 'Read' category definition of retrieving or querying data with no side effects.
From the tool's definition Tool performs 'web search' and 'news search' operations, which are query operations that retrieve and return search results without modifying, executing external commands, or deleting data.
Attacks that exploit this kind of access
Perform web or news search using Bing search engine. Supports both general web search and news search modes. It is categorised as a Read tool in the Spider MCP MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the Spider MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for web_search: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Spider MCP. Nothing to install.
web_search is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the web_search rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for web_search. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
web_search is provided by the Spider MCP server (yc9yc/spider-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Every MCP server has a record like this.
Type a name, get the same breakdown: verified identity, auth posture, risk grade, capabilities, recommended policy.
Teams ship this data inside their own products. See what a licence covers →