ML//agent//hybrid agent

An agent that combines several sources and mechanisms: an existing search index, direct navigation, browser automation, APIs. It does not traverse the Internet from scratch; at each step it picks the cheapest or most useful tool.

An agent that combines several sources and mechanisms: an existing search index, direct navigation, browser automation, APIs. It does not traverse the Internet from scratch; at each step it picks the cheapest or most useful tool.

A question, then a search engine, then five candidates, then reasoning, then two pages opened, then one of them rendered in a browser, then an API queried for one more figure, then the answer.

Each tool has a cost and a coverage: search is cheap and shallow, a fetch is cheap and precise, rendering is expensive and complete, an API is exact when it exists. The hybrid agent's skill is the routing, not any single tool (Tool Use).

It is the practical form of a web agent, and the reason the reading side of the web is no longer only crawlers and browsers but a third kind of client with judgment.