# Aura v1.8.6 Patch Notes
Aura v1.8.6 Patch Notes
This release adds Aura’s first real web research substrate, tightens Planner/Worker behavior, and continues cleaning out older prompt and research plumbing.
Highlights
Live Web Research
Aura now has a first-class research tool for current external information.
The Planner can call research_current_info when a user asks about current topics, recent releases, live documentation, or web search style questions. Aura performs the lookup through its own research layer and returns source/evidence data back to the model, so providers like DeepSeek can answer with current context even without native web search support.
This is the first version of Aura’s local browser-powered research path.
Playwright-Powered Browser Research
Added a new aura/research/ package with isolated modules for:
- research models
- search planning
- limits/deadlines
- browser-backed search/open behavior
- research service orchestration
The implementation uses Playwright Python with headless Chromium. In development, Chromium is installed through Playwright. In packaged builds, the build pipeline now prepares the bundled browser/runtime assets so users do not need to set up a browser manually.
One Clean Planner Tool
Research is exposed to the Planner as a single tool:
research_current_info(query, constraints)
The Worker does not get browser/search primitives directly. This keeps web research as a controlled Planner capability instead of scattering browser tools across the coding workflow.
Old Research Plumbing Removed
Cleaned out the older hidden research/Tavily-style direction and replaced it with a clearer architecture:
- one Planner-facing research tool
- isolated backend implementation
- no user API key required for search
- no Node/MCP dependency in the default research path
- fail-soft behavior when browser/search is unavailable