Add live web search to a Flowise chatflow

Flowise is a drag-and-drop builder for LLM apps — you wire chatflows from nodes on a canvas instead of writing framework code. To give a Flowise Agent live web results, you have two no-code-friendly paths: drop in a Custom Tool node whose function body calls the Superhighway REST API with a free key, or add an MCP Tool node that loads all five Superhighway tools at once and (optionally) pays per call from an x402 wallet.

Two paths

Get a free API key

Create a free-tier key — no credit card — with one request:

curl -X POST https://superhighway.walls.sh/auth/guest-key

The response contains a key you pass as a bearer token on every request. (Autonomous agents can skip the key and pay per call via the x402 protocol — see Path 2.)

Path 1 — Custom Tool node (REST API + free key)

In the Flowise canvas, add a Custom Tool node. A Custom Tool has three parts: a name, a description the model reads to decide when to call it, an input schema (JSON Schema), and a JavaScript function body that runs when the tool is invoked. The function receives the parsed arguments as $ variables (e.g. $query) and returns a string the agent reads back.

Set the tool's Tool name to web_search, the Tool description to Search the live web for current information, and the Input Schema to:

{
  "name": "web_search",
  "description": "Search the live web for current information",
  "parameters": {
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "query": { "type": "string", "description": "search query" }
    },
    "required": ["query"]
  }
}

Then paste this into the JavaScript Function body. It calls Superhighway's /search endpoint and returns the top results formatted as text the model can reason over:

const res = await fetch(
  "https://superhighway.walls.sh/search?q=" + encodeURIComponent($query) + "&limit=5",
  { headers: { Authorization: "Bearer YOUR_FREE_KEY" } }
);
const data = await res.json();
const results = data.results || [];
return results
  .map((r) => r.title + "\n" + r.url + "\n" + (r.description || ""))
  .join("\n\n");

Flowise runs the Custom Tool body in a sandboxed Node context where fetch is available and the schema's properties are injected as $-prefixed variables — so $query holds whatever the model passed. Replace YOUR_FREE_KEY with the key from the guest-key call above (or, better, store it as a Flowise environment variable and reference process.env).

Wire it into an Agent. Add an Agent (or Tool Agent / AgentFlow) node and a Chat Model node (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.). Drag a connection from the Custom Tool node's output into the Agent node's Tools input socket, and connect your Chat Model into the Agent's Model socket. Now when a user asks something time-sensitive, the agent calls web_search, reads the live results, and answers.

Path 2 — MCP Tool node (all five tools + x402 wallet)

Newer Flowise versions ship an MCP Tool node (also called Custom MCP / MCP Server Stdio) that connects to any MCP server over stdio and loads all of its tools into one node — no per-tool wiring. Point it at Superhighway's MCP server and the Flowise agent gets search, news, images, scrape, and research at once.

In the MCP Tool node, set the MCP Server Config (stdio) to:

{
  "command": "npx",
  "args": ["-y", "superhighway-mcp"]
}

Click Refresh and Flowise lists the five available actions; leave them all selected (or pick a subset). Then connect the MCP Tool node's output into your Agent node's Tools socket exactly like Path 1.

x402 pay-per-call (optional). To let the agent pay per call on Base instead of using a key, add an environment variable to Flowise's runtime so the spawned MCP process inherits it:

SUPERHIGHWAY_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY=0x...   # private key of a Base wallet holding USDC

Set it in your Flowise .env (self-hosted) or in the platform's environment-variables panel, then restart Flowise so npx -y superhighway-mcp picks it up. With the wallet key set, each call settles automatically per request via the x402 protocol — no signup, no API key. Without the key, the MCP server falls back to the rate-limited free tier, so it still works for testing.

Which tools are available

Full API reference: /openapi.json. Get a free API key or learn the x402 wallet flow.