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Integrations

LangChain

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LangChain is one of the most popular frameworks for building LLM-powered applications. By connecting You.com’s search and content APIs to LangChain, you can ground your agents and RAG pipelines in real-time, accurate web data instead of relying on static training knowledge alone.

The langchain-youdotcom package provides three integration points: a search tool (YouSearchTool), a content extraction tool (YouContentsTool), and a retriever (YouRetriever). Drop them into any LangChain agent or chain to give it live web access.


Getting Started

Install the package

$pip install -U langchain-youdotcom

Set your API key

$export api_key=api_key

Get your API key at you.com/platform.


Usage

YouSearchTool

YouSearchTool wraps the You.com Search API as a LangChain tool, making it available to any agent that uses tools.

1from langchain_youdotcom import YouSearchTool
2
3tool = YouSearchTool()
4result = tool.invoke("latest developments in quantum computing")
5print(result)

To customize search parameters, pass them via api_wrapper:

1from langchain_youdotcom import YouSearchAPIWrapper, YouSearchTool
2
3tool = YouSearchTool(
4 api_wrapper=YouSearchAPIWrapper(
5 count=5,
6 livecrawl="web", # "web", "news", or "all"
7 freshness="day", # "day", "week", "month", or "year"
8 safesearch="moderate", # "off", "moderate", or "strict"
9 )
10)
11result = tool.invoke("AI news today")

YouContentsTool

YouContentsTool fetches and extracts clean content from web pages.

1from langchain_youdotcom import YouContentsTool
2
3tool = YouContentsTool()
4result = tool.invoke({"urls": ["https://python.langchain.com"]})
5print(result[:500])

YouRetriever

YouRetriever implements LangChain’s retriever interface, making it a drop-in for any RAG pipeline.

1from langchain_youdotcom import YouRetriever
2
3retriever = YouRetriever(count=5)
4docs = retriever.invoke("climate change policy updates")
5
6for doc in docs:
7 print(doc.metadata["url"])
8 print(doc.page_content[:300])
9 print()

To use it in a retrieval chain:

1from langchain_youdotcom import YouRetriever
2from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI
3from langchain_core.output_parsers import StrOutputParser
4from langchain_core.prompts import ChatPromptTemplate
5from langchain_core.runnables import RunnablePassthrough
6
7retriever = YouRetriever(count=5, livecrawl="web")
8llm = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o-mini")
9
10prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.from_template(
11 """Answer based on the following context:
12
13{context}
14
15Question: {question}"""
16)
17
18
19def format_docs(docs):
20 return "\n\n".join(doc.page_content for doc in docs)
21
22
23chain = (
24 {"context": retriever | format_docs, "question": RunnablePassthrough()}
25 | prompt
26 | llm
27 | StrOutputParser()
28)
29
30for chunk in chain.stream("What is the current state of fusion energy research?"):
31 print(chunk, end="", flush=True)

Agent with LangGraph

Both tools work with any LangChain agent. Here’s an example using create_agent:

1from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI
2from langchain_youdotcom import YouSearchTool, YouContentsTool
3from langchain.agents import create_agent
4
5llm = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o-mini")
6tools = [YouSearchTool(), YouContentsTool()]
7agent = create_agent(llm, tools)
8
9response = agent.invoke(
10 {"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What are the top AI news stories this week?"}]}
11)
12print(response["messages"][-1].content)

Community package

You.com is also available via langchain-community:

1from langchain_community.retrievers import YouRetriever
2from langchain_community.tools.you import YouSearchTool

The standalone langchain-youdotcom package is recommended for new projects as it stays up to date with the latest You.com API features.


Resources

LangChain Tool Docs

Official LangChain documentation for YouSearchTool

LangChain Retriever Docs

Official LangChain documentation for YouRetriever

Search API Reference

Full Search API parameters and response schema

Contents API Reference

Full Contents API parameters and response schema