youdotcom-oss/agent-skills/you-research

You.com Research Routing

Use this skill to choose the right You.com research path for the user's goal: agent-led search with you-search and you-contents, or one-shot cited synthesis with the you-research MCP tool.

Prerequisites

The You.com MCP endpoint must be reachable from the host:

• Managed research (you-research): https://api.you.com/mcp/research with OAuth (preferred), YDC_API_KEY bearer auth, or an MPP/x402-aware MCP client.

MPP/x402-aware MCP clients may receive HTTP 402 payment challenges from You.com tools, then retry with payment headers. Let the host client handle external payment and retry; do not add wallet signing logic to this skill.

Managed research with the you-research MCP tool

Call the you-research MCP tool when the user wants a synthesized answer with citations in one step. It runs You.com's managed research pipeline and returns a concise answer with inline citations and source metadata, so the host does not orchestrate multi-step search itself.

For keyless payment with no API key and no manual signing, compose the You.com MCP server with the Coinbase Payments MCP server; see Coinbase Payments MCP path for setup and when to choose it.

If the you-research tool is unavailable or the client cannot tolerate its response time, fall back to the agent-led search pipeline in the you-web skill and say which path was used.

Decision Tree

• User is cost-conscious or wants to develop/fine-tune a research skill -> use the agent-led search pipeline in the you-web skill.
• User needs a one-shot synthesized answer with citations -> call the you-research MCP tool.
• User needs OAuth or MPP/x402 payment handling -> use the you-research MCP tool with a payment-aware MCP client or the Coinbase Payments MCP composition.
• Required MCP tools are unavailable -> tell the user what is missing, provide the setup options from the prerequisites above, and request approval before installing, connecting, or changing configuration.
• Simple lookup -> use you-search once, answer directly.
• URL provided -> use you-contents on those URLs.
• Everything else -> use the agent-led search pipeline in the you-web skill.

Preserve the core research requirements regardless of path: read sources before relying on exact claims, cross-check key facts, cite real URLs, and finish with the best supported answer even when evidence is incomplete.