Licensed to be used in conjunction with basebox, only.
Web Search
The Web Search connector lets the basebox assistant query the public web in real time. The default search backend is Staan — the European search index built by Qwant and Ecosia (European Search Perspective, Paris): an independent EU index with EU data processing, designed for GDPR-first deployments. A DuckDuckGo-based connector remains available as an alternative.
When to use it
Enable Web Search when users need answers that depend on current, public information — for example:
- recent news and announcements,
- product or vendor lookups,
- public reference material that is not in your internal wiki or RAG corpus.
If your use case is purely internal (e.g. clinical SOPs, internal documentation), you typically do not need Web Search — use DokuWiki or a RAG app instead.
Configuration
On the Admin → Connectors page:
- Find Staan Search (European).
- Toggle it On.
- Optionally enter a Staan API key.
The API key is optional. When the field is left empty, searches run on the shared basebox Staan account (basebox's quota). Enter your organisation's own API key from the Staan console to run on your own subscription and quota — recommended for production use. A key that Staan rejects produces an explicit error; it never falls back silently to the basebox account.
Firewall / egress requirements
If your deployment restricts outbound traffic, the Web Search connector needs the following hosts opened on the customer firewall (outbound HTTPS only):
| Connector | Required outbound hosts (TCP 443) |
|---|---|
| Staan Search (default) | api.staan.ai |
| DuckDuckGo (alternative) | duckduckgo.com, html.duckduckgo.com, lite.duckduckgo.com |
That is the complete list per connector: the Staan connector talks only to the Staan API — it never fetches web pages itself (even the "detailed" page-content mode is served by the API), so no other outbound access is required. basebox additionally enforces this as an egress allow-list at the MCP gateway: the connector container cannot reach any host other than the ones declared above, even if it tried.
Search features
- Languages/markets: the Staan index focuses on English, German and French; the assistant can pass a language (
en,de,fr) or a full market code (e.g.en-gb) per query. - Short and detailed modes: short mode (default, fast) returns titles, URLs and snippets; detailed mode also returns each result's page content as Markdown, fetched server-side by the Staan API and capped in size.
- Extra snippets: optionally, reranked content passages per result — a cheaper middle ground between short and detailed.
Web Search is off by default and starts switched off in every new conversation — enabling it is a deliberate choice each time. Before the first search in a conversation, basebox asks for the user's agreement. Web Search can also be enabled or disabled for a whole installation.
Privacy notes
- Queries are sent to the search provider — they leave your basebox deployment. With Staan, they are processed in EU data centres by an EU company (EUSP, Paris; a DPA is available, and EU-only routing can be requested from the provider).
- Queries leave through basebox's own connection; no basebox user identity and no user IP address is sent with the query.
- basebox does not log the text of queries; the audit log records metadata only (see the Web Search security introduction).
- If your environment is fully air-gapped, Web Search will not function.
Limitations
- The Staan index is young (the joint European index launched in 2025; the German index in 2026) and focuses on English, German and French; coverage of other languages and very long-tail content may be limited. Where the EU index is thin, the provider may supplement results from a non-EU backend — this fallback can be disabled at the provider on request for strict-sovereignty deployments.
- The API returns up to 10 results per query.
- Rate limits and quotas of the Staan plan in use apply (shared basebox account, or your own key's plan).