web-search now returns HTTP 424 when its primary search fails and the public-news fallback has no matching articles. That response includes the provider status, so a paid caller can tell the difference between a source outage and a source list worth reviewing.

A saved successful result still has a better path. The endpoint returns that result as a marked stale cache entry when both live sources cannot provide a list. Repeat research agents can keep the earlier result and its source state with the next run.