searxng

What This Skill Does

The SearXNG skill for OpenClaw provides a powerful and privacy-conscious way to search the web directly from your AI assistant. Unlike traditional search engines that track your activity, this skill leverages your own local SearXNG instance. SearXNG acts as a metasearch engine, aggregating results from multiple search engines without revealing your queries to them. This means you can search for web pages, images, news, and videos while maintaining your online privacy. The skill offers flexible output formats, including rich text and machine-readable JSON, and allows for advanced filtering by category, language, and time range.

Installation

To install the SearXNG skill, you'll need to use the clawhub command-line tool. Navigate to your OpenClaw environment and execute the following command:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/abk234/searxng

This command fetches the necessary scripts and configurations from the official OpenClaw skills repository. After installation, you must configure your SearXNG instance URL. This can be done by setting the SEARXNG_URL environment variable in your terminal or by adding it to your Clawdbot configuration file:

Environment Variable:

export SEARXNG_URL=https://your-searxng-instance.com

**Clawdbot Configuration (clawbot.json or similar):

{
  "env": {
    "SEARXNG_URL": "https://your-searxng-instance.com"
  }
}

If SEARXNG_URL is not explicitly set, the skill will default to http://localhost:8080.

Use Cases

The SearXNG skill is ideal for users who prioritize privacy and want to avoid the data collection practices of major search engines. It's perfect for:

• Privacy-conscious research: Gather information on any topic without leaving a traceable footprint.
• Targeted information gathering: Quickly find images, news articles, or videos on a specific subject, filtered by category.
• Automated information retrieval: Integrate with other tools or scripts by using the JSON output format for programmatic access to search results.
• Customizable search experiences: Fine-tune search parameters like language and recency for more relevant results.
• Avoiding search engine bias: Get a broader perspective by aggregating results from various sources through your SearXNG instance.

Example Prompts

• "Search for 'latest advancements in renewable energy' using SearXNG."
• "Find news articles about the upcoming Mars mission via SearXNG, showing the top 15 results."
• "Perform a web search for 'vegan recipes' with SearXNG and return the results in JSON format."

Tips & Limitations

• Local SearXNG Instance: This skill requires you to have a running and accessible SearXNG instance. Ensure the SEARXNG_URL is correctly configured.
• Result Limits: By default, the skill returns the top 10 results. You can increase this limit using the -n or --number flag (e.g., -n 20).
• Category Specificity: While you can search by category (images, news, videos), SearXNG itself relies on its configured engines. The quality and availability of results within specific categories depend on your SearXNG setup.
• Advanced Filtering: Utilize --language and --time-range for more refined searches. Supported time ranges typically include hour, day, week, month, year.
• JSON Output: For scripting and automation, the --format json flag is invaluable, providing structured data that can be easily parsed.
• No External APIs: A key benefit is the lack of reliance on third-party search engine APIs, enhancing privacy and avoiding potential API key management issues.