Search, Inspect, Fetch: Exploiting Structure-Aware Boolean Retrieval for Deep-Search Agents

[2608.02751] Search, Inspect, Fetch: Exploiting Structure-Aware Boolean Retrieval for Deep-Search Agents Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Computer Science > Information Retrieval arXiv:2608.02751 (cs) [Submitted on 3 Aug 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 28 Aug 2026 (this version, v3)] Title: Search, Inspect, Fetch: Exploiting Structure-Aware Boolean Retrieval for Deep-Search Agents Authors: Shuai Wang , Haodong Chen , Yu Yin , Shengyao Zhuang , Bevan Koopman , Guido Zuccon View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Existing deep-search agents use a Search-Visit workflow that retrieves whole webpages without considering the structure they expose through titles, headings, sections, and metadata. This prevents agents from directly constraining retrieval to parts of a webpage and often carries irrelevant content into their context. We introduce Sieve, a search-inspect-fetch strategy driven by a Boolean Query Language (BQL): it searches webpage fields to filter candidates, uses an interchangeable ranker to order them, presents structure-rich result cards for inspection, and fetches only selected sections. Across three QA collections, Sieve is more accurate than the strongest conventional Search-Visit configuration on each collection while using 20.7-50.6% fewer tokens. Boolean filtering improves every tested ranker, and the accuracy-context advantage persists across retriever choices and agent backbones. Our implementation is included in the SkimSearchAgent library this https URL . Comments: clean up text, format, clearer setup; Subjects: Information Retrieval (cs.IR) ; Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL) Cite as: arXiv:2608.02751 [cs.IR] (or arXiv:2608.02751v3 [cs.IR] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.02751 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Shuai Wang [ view email ] [v1] Mon, 3 Aug 2026 18:01:05 UTC (1,323 KB) [v2] Wed, 5 Aug 2026 02:06:16 UTC (1,343 KB) [v3] Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:06:47 UTC (1,464 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Additional Features Audio Summary Current browse context: cs.IR < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs cs.AI cs.CL References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab)

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