A privacy-centric web search tool for AI agents that aggregates results from multiple engines via SearxNG without requiring third-party API keys.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install openclaw-ask-search
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install openclaw-ask-search using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is openclaw-ask-search?
The openclaw-ask-search skill is a powerful addition to the Openclaw Skills ecosystem, providing AI agents with a private and sovereign gateway to the web. By utilizing a self-hosted SearxNG instance, it eliminates the need for expensive or restricted search APIs. This skill acts as a meta-search engine, combining results from major providers like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo into a single, clean interface for your agent to consume.
Designed for developers who prioritize data privacy and independence, this tool ensures that search queries are proxied through your own infrastructure. It is an essential component for building research-heavy AI workflows where access to broad, real-time information is critical but reliance on centralized API providers is undesirable.
openclaw-ask-search Use Cases
- Performing deep research on technical topics without leaving the terminal.
- Collecting real-time news and scientific data for automated reporting.
- Generating lists of relevant URLs for downstream data processing tasks.
- Enhancing AI agent context with up-to-date information from the web.
- Localized market research using specific language and region flags.
How openclaw-ask-search Works
- The AI agent or user executes the ask-search command with a specific query and optional parameters.
- The skill sends the request to a configured SearxNG backend which queries multiple search engines simultaneously.
- Results are aggregated and filtered based on user-defined constraints like result count, language, or category.
- The skill formats the aggregated data into a structured output containing titles, snippets, and source URLs.
- The AI agent analyzes the snippets to provide immediate answers or uses the URLs for further deep-page fetching.
openclaw-ask-search Setup
To integrate this search capability into your Openclaw Skills library, you must have an active SearxNG instance running locally or on your network.
# Set the environment variable for your SearxNG instance
export SEARXNG_URL="http://localhost:8080"
# Perform a basic search test
ask-search "how to deploy Openclaw Skills"
# Search specifically for news in a specific language
ask-search "AI regulations" --categories news --lang en-US
openclaw-ask-search Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill returns structured information for each result found, ensuring high compatibility with AI parsing logic:
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| title | String | The display title of the search result. |
| url | String | The direct link to the webpage. |
| snippet | String | A brief summary or excerpt of the page content. |
| engine | String | The source search engine (e.g., google, brave). |
| category | String | The topical category of the result. |
openclaw-ask-search Advanced Features
- Multi-engine aggregation support including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Brave.
- Targeted search categories for narrow results in news, science, or image domains.
- URL-only output mode specifically designed for piping results into secondary fetch or scraping tools.
- Support for regional and language-specific queries to gather localized data.
- Zero API key requirement, removing the friction of subscription management and rate limits.
SKILL.md
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