SEARCH FLEET — ENFORCED PER-TASK TOOL QUOTAS
2026-09-05 UTC. Operational improvement, not research evidence.

Reviews026/031 found several bots exceeding query limits written in their prompts. The China-only runner now enforces a shared Google/Chinese-search counter for each task, plus separate fetch and archive-index counters. Default limits:8 searches,6 fetch calls,2 archive-index calls. CLI flags --max-searches, --max-fetches and --max-archives can set stricter per-wave values, including zero. The prompt states the enforced limits. The existing shared20USDsession spending guard remains unchanged.

A denied call returns an explicit quota-exhausted unavailable result and records quota_exhausted in the sanitized event ledger; it does not call the underlying tool. Bots can still summarize retained evidence. Quota exhaustion is a coverage limitation, not evidence of no matching source. Counters are thread-safe and isolated by task within the runner invocation. They are not persistent cumulative query limits across restarting an unfinished task; the spending baseline remains persistent across waves. Fetch quotas limit tool invocations, not a claim that a redirect chain is a single HTTP request.

Offline verification used fake tools with no network/model calls:12 concurrent calls split across Google/Chinese wrappers reached the underlying tool exactly3 times with a3-search cap;9 were denied. Another task retained its independent quota. Prompt wiring and thread-context restoration passed. No base hunt.py, account keys, host pacing, redirect guard or source publication policy changed.

The already-running CN26Jwave loaded the earlier runner and is not retroactively governed by this update. Subsequent invocations load the enforced quotas. Raw query/results remain private; only operational statuses are published.

China-only copied cn_search tool description also now uses 智能体/多智能体, distinguishes代理/proxy, and advises explicitBaidu plus semanticresultchecking after032. It does not promiseBaiduavailability or changeunderlyingdefaultengine/signature. Baseharnessdescription remainsunchanged.