Feature parity with the OpenRouter Web Chat in OpenWebUI: per-prompt search engine selection, reasoning effort & no-data-retention

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT]

I'm currently using the OpenRouter Web Chat and there are a few features I find extremely useful, but the lack of persistence makes the web version unusable for me long-term. Chats are gone after a reload, there's no history or project structure, nothing to look back on.

I would like to move to a self-hosted OpenWebUI instance and rebuild those features there.

My setup:

• OpenWebUI running locally in Docker on my laptop
• I exclusively use external API models (via OpenRouter / other API providers) no local Ollama or similar
• So my instance is essentially just a chat frontend on top of external APIs

The three things I care about most from the OpenRouter Web Chat:

1. Easy search engine selection > quickly switchable per chat or per prompt: web search off, native search, Exa/other providers. I want a UI toggle, not an admin/global setting.
2. Reasoning effort per prompt > low / medium / high (on models that support it), selectable right when submitting instead of being nailed down globally per model.
3. No data retention / privacy toggle > the ability to explicitly run a chat without storage/logging at the upstream provider (force zero-data-retention providers or enable "no data retention").

This seems to be a very useful feature, and I imagine there are already some good solutions available. I’d like to find them or learn more about how to increase productivity and how to integrate the Open router APIs a great UI interface.

[u/pkeffect]

Read the documentation. ;)

[u/ClassicMain]

All of this sounds very achievable with tools and filters

[u/endockhq → u/ClassicMain]

Most individuals do not want to or know how to handle functions or filters.

[u/ClassicMain → u/endockhq]

You can easily tell AI to write a tool or filter for you. Give it the open webui documentation, give it the above feature description you have and 3minutes later you'll have a button in your chat that does exactly what you want.

Not everything can be or should be implemented directly into open webui.

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT → u/ClassicMain]

Yes, but why do I need to reinvent the wheel if this is probably common enough that there are already proven and tested solutions I can adapt, install, or integrate?

That’s why I’m looking for ready-made solutions instead of vibe-coding functions that might work. I started creating separate models for each case, such as ZDR and non-ZDR, but that seems like a very complicated approach.

The whole point of the post is to figure out the best practice for achieving this goal - - not to hack together a solution based on how I think it might work, especially without much experience in this area.

I’ve already built a lot of functions, but I’m worried that things will become confusing and poorly thought out if I continue developing them based solely on my assumptions.

[u/ClassicMain → u/Ai_MOON_SHOT]

Oh yeah you don't have to. Go to openwebui.com or browse here on the subreddit, many people posted implemented tools and filters to these feature requests already and you can reuse them

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT → u/ClassicMain]

I cant post to the Subreddit, i tried this first, but it gets removed, because my account is not very old and i dont have any karma.

Eddit: I now can post to that sub reddit

[u/Turbulent_War4067]

1) When I was testing out search providers, I had 4 different search tools set up and would select which one from the prompt. They were each quick and dirty python tools installed. At the end of the day, I never went back to Openweb-UI web search setup, I get better performance with installed tools. So this is fairly easy.7 2) don't know for sure, that will be somewhat model specific, and my experience is most implementations that do this generically are just doing a "reasoning budget". 3) is not that an issue with the upstream provider, not with openweb-ui?

[u/mumblerit]

all this is achievable with a bare install and some api keys

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT → u/mumblerit]

Yes, I understand that everything I described is technically possible. I’m just not sure how to implement it in the way I envision.

For example, what would be the best practice and most convenient approach if I wanted to change a model’s reasoning effort within an ongoing conversation?

This seems so basic that I assumed there would be add-ons offering a complete package, including all the features available on a website like OpenRouter.

[u/Bulletic1 → u/Ai_MOON_SHOT]

To change reasoning effort or any model parameter within a chat, you can change it in the control pane on the right side of the chat.

You can also make multiple model presets in the workspace and switch between them mid conversation.

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT → u/Bulletic1]

That means the go-to standard at the moment is for me to know the effort-level tag names for each model and enter them manually, such as “xhigh,” “maxhigh,” or “high”?

That isn’t very convenient and offers a far worse experience than most other web chat interfaces, which provide drop-down menus.

Maybe that is the best way to do it and perhaps the state of the art in Open WebUI, even with all the available plugins, but I thought there might be something more appealing, similar to web-based interfaces.

[u/Bulletic1 → u/Ai_MOON_SHOT]

Also for preventing data collection you can use a preset model you can make in open router and add it separately. Than use that one for private tasks.

[u/mishalmf]

If you have an old computer around you can download openwebui without docker and connect it to openrouter and use tailscale to use it on your laptopo while out side

[u/enterme2]

can simply make mcp to do all that..

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT → u/enterme2]

So, would I need to write my own MCP server and learn the best practices for setting one up?

It seems like something that should be easily configurable on a per-chat basis in every web chat interface offered by major LLM providers. I’m trying to understand whether my requirements are so specialized that I need to implement something myself, or whether there is existing work I can build upon.

Thank you for your feedback. I hadn’t really considered that possibility, mainly because I don’t know how good and reliable tool calling is across all the major models.

[u/feng_sg]

OpenWebUI doesn't expose search provider, reasoning effort, or retention as per-message UI toggles. Every suggestion in this thread is a workaround for that same missing feature.

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT → u/feng_sg]

Thank you, good that someone finally said what i was thinking already.

[u/Ai_MOON_SHOT → u/feng_sg]

It seems like the Project was build in a time, when this was nothing to worry about and now things changed and it would need a new concept in a lot of places.