Can We Build Elite Search Agents Without Massive Industrial RL Pipelines?

Search agents have become essential infrastructure for frontier language models, yet their development remains locked behind corporate walls. These systems need to handle a fundamentally difficult problem: given access to tools and a knowledge base, explore systematically, make smart decisions about which paths to pursue, and know when to pivot strategies. Unlike a human researcher who can draw on intuition and common sense, an LLM agent works from what it’s learned during training, which means it needs explicit instruction in how to search well.