Web fetch
Anton can retrieve the contents of a URL through the web_fetch tool, which
is on by default. Like web search, execution depends on
your LLM provider:
| Provider | web_fetch |
|---|---|
| Anthropic BYOK | Anthropic native server tool |
| OpenAI BYOK | covered by web_search |
| Minds-Enterprise-Cloud (mdb.ai) | mdb.ai passthrough |
| Generic OpenAI-compatible | built-in HTTP GET fallback (no key needed) |
The fallback needs no API key at all: Anton performs a plain HTTP GET, follows redirects, and strips HTML down to readable plain text before handing it to the model.
What to expect
- 30-second timeout. Slow pages fail rather than hang the conversation.
- HTML is stripped to plain text. Works best on article-style pages — blog posts, documentation, news.
- Paywalls and JS-heavy single-page apps return little. The fallback does not execute JavaScript, so pages that render client-side may come back nearly empty.
Anything a web page says ends up in the model's context. A malicious page can embed instructions intended for the model (prompt injection). Anton's credential vault keeps secrets out of prompts, but you should still be deliberate about which URLs you ask Anton to fetch, and review any actions it proposes after reading external content. See Security model.
Opting out
To disable web fetch, set:
export ANTON_WEB_FETCH_ENABLED=false
or add the line to your workspace config (.anton/.env).