private-web-search-searchxng

What This Skill Does

The private-web-search-searchxng skill integrates your OpenClaw AI agent with a self-hosted SearXNG instance. SearXNG is a free, privacy-respecting, metasearch engine that aggregates results from dozens of search services (like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Brave) without tracking your activity or creating user profiles. By using this skill, your agent can perform real-time web research, fetch up-to-date information, and retrieve diverse search results while maintaining complete control over your data footprint. It serves as a direct bridge between your agent's reasoning capabilities and the vast information index of the public web, all while ensuring that queries remain private and independent of third-party API tracking.

Installation

To install this skill, use the ClawHub CLI command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/adelpro/private-web-search-searchxng. Before using it, you must have a running instance of SearXNG. Use the Docker command provided in the documentation to spin up a container. Ensure the JSON API format is enabled in the configuration file, as this is a strict requirement for the OpenClaw agent to parse search results. Once the service is running, the agent will automatically detect and utilize the SEARXNG_HOST and SEARXNG_PORT environment variables to initiate requests.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for scenarios where privacy is a top priority, such as conducting competitive intelligence, researching sensitive topics, or gathering data for local projects where you do not want your search history to be logged by major tech providers. It is also an excellent alternative for environments where external search APIs are blocked or unavailable, as it provides a self-hosted entry point to the internet. Use it to pull documentation, compare product features, or stay updated on breaking news without incurring costs from paid search APIs.

Example Prompts

1. "Perform a search on current industry trends for renewable energy and summarize the top 5 findings from different search engines."
2. "Research the latest documentation for the OpenClaw SDK and provide a brief overview of the installation requirements using the web search skill."
3. "Search for unbiased reviews of the latest AI hardware and compile a list of pros and cons based on the search results."

Tips & Limitations

To optimize performance, ensure that your SearXNG instance has a stable network connection. If you notice incomplete data, verify that your instance is configured to support the JSON response format. Because this is a metasearch engine, the quality of results depends on the search engines enabled in your SearXNG settings—you can customize your active engines in the settings.yml file to favor specific sources. Remember that this tool fetches public web data; it cannot access private intranet content or gated membership sites.