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Web Tools give Cline the ability to search the internet and fetch content from specific URLs during your tasks. This is useful when you need up-to-date information, documentation lookups, or research that goes beyond your local codebase and the model’s built-in knowledge.
Web Tools require the Cline provider. They are not available when using other providers such as OpenRouter, Anthropic direct, AWS Bedrock, or self-hosted models.

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How Web Tools work

Cline has two web tools:

web_search

Searches the web and returns a list of relevant pages based on your query. Useful for finding documentation, examples, and recent information.

web_fetch

Fetches and analyzes content from a specific URL. Useful when you already know the page you need and want Cline to read its full content.
When Cline determines that web information would help complete your task, it uses these tools automatically. The tools call Cline’s backend API, which handles the search or fetch operation and returns the results.

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Enabling Web Tools

1

Sign in to Cline

Make sure you’re signed in to Cline and using the Cline provider.
2

Open Feature Settings

Go to Cline Settings → Feature Settings.
3

Enable Web Tools

Toggle Web Tools on.
Web Tools can be auto-approved using the Use the browser setting in Auto Approve. When enabled, Cline won’t pause to ask permission before performing web searches or fetches.

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Use cases

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Looking up documentation

When working with an unfamiliar library or API, ask Cline to:
  • Search for the official documentation
  • Fetch a specific API reference page
  • Find usage examples and common patterns
Look up the latest React Query v5 documentation for the useInfiniteQuery hook

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Research before implementation

Before writing code, have Cline:
  • Search for best practices and established patterns
  • Find recent discussions about approaches or tradeoffs
  • Identify known issues or limitations with a library
Search for best practices for implementing rate limiting in a Node.js Express API

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Checking the latest information

For time-sensitive details that may be outdated in the model’s training data:
  • Latest release notes and changelogs
  • Recent bug fixes or security advisories
  • Current recommended package versions
Fetch the changelog for Prisma 5.x and summarize the breaking changes

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Debugging with external resources

When you hit an error, Cline can search for it directly: 
Search for this error: "Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'map')" in a React component

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Browser automation

Web Tools handle search and fetch for text-based content. For interactive browser tasks — clicking elements, filling forms, taking screenshots of a running web app — Cline uses the browser_action tool instead. See Web Tools for more details.