AI Agents for Research Automation: How News and Web Search Work

The tool features and pricing in this article were checked against each vendor's official documentation on October 2, 2026. Pricing and features may change. Before you rely on them, check the latest information through the sources at the end.

When you automate research with an AI agent, first decide where to collect from and what to keep. Searches without fixed sources return different results every day and are hard to compare. Decide the sources first, then the summary format, and finally how to deliver it.

Three Ways to Automate Research: RSS, Search APIs and Browser Automation

There are three ways to collect information: RSS, which receives updates from set sites; search APIs, which look things up by keyword; and browser automation, which opens pages and reads them. You can combine all three.

We recommend starting with RSS. Because the sources are fixed, results are easier to compare day to day. Add a search API for sites without RSS or when you want to discover sources you do not know yet. Use browser automation only for information you cannot get any other way.

Collecting and Summarizing with RSS

n8n has an RSS Read node for reading RSS. Enter the URL of the feed and it returns a list of articles. There is also an RSS Feed Trigger node that starts when a new article is published. When you build news collection in n8n, use one of these two as the entry point.

Choose between n8n's RSS nodes based on how you deliver. If you want a notice each time a new article appears, use the RSS Feed Trigger. If you want a single digest every morning, place RSS Read after a trigger that runs at a set time, and summarize the articles since the previous day together. When many people read the results, a single digest keeps the number of notifications down.

1. List the RSS URLs: industry news sites, competitors' announcement pages, government update pages, and so on
2. Exclude articles already read. Record article URLs in a spreadsheet or similar so the same article is not summarized twice
3. Have the AI summarize. Have it output a headline, a 3-line summary, and the original article URL in a fixed format
4. Combine the summaries and deliver them by chat or email

Always attach the original article URL to each summary so readers can open the article and check it. AI summaries can contain mistakes. Make it a rule to check numbers and dates against the original article before using them.

Using a Web Search Tool

To have an AI agent search the web, use a search API. Here we use Tavily as an example. Tavily is an API for web search and for extracting the body text of web pages. To use it, you issue an API key.

Building It with n8n

According to Tavily's official documentation, in n8n you add Tavily from the node list and choose Search or Extract. You can also add it as a tool for the AI Agent node. As a tool, the AI agent uses search when it decides it needs to. If you search the same keywords every day, placing it as a node makes it easier to control how many searches run.

Building It with Dify

In Dify, install the Tavily tool from the plugin marketplace and authenticate with an API key. In Chatflow and Workflow, you can use the Tavily Search and Tavily Extract nodes. In an Agent app, add it as a tool and the AI searches when needed. To summarize web search results in Dify, place an LLM node after the Tavily Search node and specify the summary format.

• Search type (topic): choose general, news, or finance
• Time range (time_range): filter by publish or update date, such as 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or 1 year
• Site filters: specify domains to include and domains to exclude
• Result count: specify how many results one search returns, up to 20

How Costs Are Counted

Tavily pricing is counted in credits. A basic search costs 1 credit per call, and an advanced search costs 2 credits per call. Each month there is an allowance of up to 1,000 credits with no charge, and pay-as-you-go usage costs $0.008 per credit. For example, running 10 basic searches a day for 30 days uses 300 credits.

If you let an AI agent decide when to search, it may search many times on its own. Set how many searches one run may make, and check the credits used once a month.

Delivering Every Morning (Scheduled Runs)

To deliver every morning, run the workflow at a set time. In n8n, use the Schedule Trigger node. You can set the time in units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months, or with a cron expression.

Watch for time zone offsets. The Schedule Trigger follows the workflow's time zone or the time zone of the whole n8n instance. The default for self-hosted n8n is New York time in the United States. If you want delivery in the Japanese morning, select the Japan time zone in the workflow settings.

In Dify, Workflow apps can use a schedule trigger. One workflow can have only one schedule trigger. You set the time with hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly options or a cron expression, and you can see the next 5 run times on screen.

Checking Site Terms of Use and Copyright

Before collecting, check the terms of use of the sites you collect from. Some sites prohibit automated retrieval or republishing their content. Check first, especially when reading pages through browser automation.

On copyright, Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs published the 'Checklist & Guidance on AI and Copyright' on July 31, 2024. For people using AI at work, it lists points such as the following.

• Check the terms of use of the AI service you use, and use it in line with them
• Whether something infringes copyright can be judged differently for AI generation and for using what was generated. Uses such as distributing generated output online are often considered to fall outside the provisions that limit rights
• Before using generated output, check that it does not resemble existing copyrighted works

The same checklist says that when you build a database containing existing copyrighted works for purposes such as RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), and the aim is to output the expression of those works, permission from the rights holder may be required. When you share collected articles internally, limiting it to summaries and links to the original articles, without republishing article text as-is, reduces the cases where the judgment is unclear. When in doubt, check the Agency for Cultural Affairs materials and consult an expert if needed.

Search APIs and AI model services each have their own terms of use as well. The terms of the sites you collect from and the terms of the services you use are separate. When you introduce the system, keep a record that you checked both.

We explain how to use collected information for social media posts in AI Agents for Social Media, and give an overview of what AI agents can do in What AI Agents Can Do.

The Marketing Category on Employee Store

Employee Store is a marketplace where companies can adopt AI agents built by developers. One of its categories is marketing. Sellers can list in any format, including n8n or Dify workflows and their own custom-built agents. We cover n8n basics in How to Use n8n.

Pricing is one-time purchase, monthly, or setup fee plus monthly, and payment is through Stripe. After purchase, you message the seller in the deal room, check the deliverables, and accept them. Delivery is, in principle, within 3 business days, and you are refunded if it runs late. Before you adopt an agent, check on the listing page who pays for external services such as search APIs.