Web and browser

Chats can look things up. You don’t need to switch anything on: when a question needs the web, the model searches, reads what it finds and tells you where its answer came from. While it works, the chat shows what it’s searching for and reading.

Search and reading pages

Your Mac does the searching and reading for the model:

• Search uses DuckDuckGo by default, with no account or key. You can use your own SearXNG or a Brave Search key instead.
• Reading a page turns it into text the model can take in.

Pages can’t send the model to your own network. Your router, other devices at home and Pallm itself are off limits.

The browser

Some pages only work in a real browser: they need scripts, clicks, forms or scrolling. For those, the model can use a private Chrome on your Mac.

• Each chat gets its own tab in its own private profile, closed after 15 minutes unused.
• Open the chat’s side panel and choose Web to watch the tab live while the model works. A bar above the message box says what it’s browsing.
• The model is told never to buy, post, send, sign up or enter passwords unless you asked for exactly that.

The browser works when Chrome, Chromium, Edge or Brave is installed on your Mac. It doesn’t need a model that can see.

Settings

Most people never need to change anything. For the rest, these go in ~/.pallm/config.toml on the host:

[web]
enabled = true            # false: no web tools at all
search = "duckduckgo"     # or "searxng" with search_url, "brave" with api_key_file, or "none"

[browser]
enabled = true
idle_timeout = "15m"

Restart the service from the menu bar icon after editing the file.