z.ai-web-search

What This Skill Does

The z.ai-web-search skill provides OpenClaw agents with a powerful, AI-optimized gateway to the live web via the Z.AI Web Search API. Unlike standard search tools, this skill is specifically engineered for Large Language Models, returning clean, structured data including page titles, URLs, and concise summaries. This facilitates seamless integration into AI workflows, allowing agents to retrieve real-time information, verify facts, or conduct deep-dive research without dealing with the clutter of raw HTML or ad-heavy search engine result pages. The skill includes both search capabilities and a lightweight content extraction utility, making it a versatile tool for agents requiring up-to-date data for decision-making.

Installation

To integrate this skill, navigate to your terminal and execute the following command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/bartoszpijet/zai-search. Once installed, you must register for an API key at the Z.AI Platform and define it within your system environment variables as ZAI_API_KEY. Proper configuration ensures the script can authenticate correctly with the Z.AI backend to fetch high-quality data.

Use Cases

• Market Research: Gather specific industry data from trusted domains like 'sohu.com' or major news outlets within a defined time frame.
• Fact-Checking: Verify current events or claims using the recency filters to ensure the model isn't hallucinating based on outdated training data.
• Automated Reporting: Build an agent that runs daily, searches for specific keywords in niche industry journals, and extracts summaries to compile a daily briefing for the user.
• Content Curation: Aggregate high-quality links and snippets for newsletter creation or competitive analysis workflows.

Example Prompts

1. "Find the latest updates on quantum computing breakthroughs from the last 7 days and summarize the findings into a table."
2. "Search for recent expert opinions on lithium-ion battery efficiency and limit the results to tech-focused domains."
3. "Look up the documentation for the new Z.AI API updates and extract the key features mentioned in the top 5 search results."

Tips & Limitations

When using z.ai-web-search, leverage the --recency flag to prevent the model from retrieving stale information. For broader queries, use the -n parameter to increase the pool of potential data; however, be mindful that processing too many results at once may consume more tokens. The extract.mjs script should be used sparingly, as it performs basic HTML stripping and lacks the high-fidelity summarization found in the native search API results. Always prioritize the API's returned summaries for LLM processing tasks to achieve better accuracy and lower latency.