web-search

What This Skill Does

The web-search skill acts as a powerful gateway between the OpenClaw AI agent and the vast repository of information on the internet. By leveraging the DuckDuckGo Search API, this skill allows your agent to perform real-time information gathering, fact-checking, and data retrieval without the need for complex API keys or authentication. It supports multi-modal search capabilities, allowing users to find web pages, news articles, high-quality images, and video content directly through the agent interface. The skill provides granular control over results, allowing for precise filtering by time range, content type, and visual metadata, ensuring the information retrieved is both relevant and current.

Installation

To enable this skill within your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/billyutw/web-search

Additionally, ensure the Python backend dependency is installed on your local host system:

pip install duckduckgo-search

Use Cases

This skill is indispensable for research-heavy workflows. Use it to:

• Monitor live news cycles: Retrieve the latest updates on specific global events or industry trends by using time-range filters.
• Fact-checking: Validate claims or gather data from reputable web sources to improve the accuracy of AI-generated responses.
• Market Intelligence: Aggregate web resources, product reviews, or competitor analysis by searching for specific industry keywords.
• Creative Research: Quickly locate visual assets or video tutorials by utilizing the image and video search types with color and size parameters.
• Academic/General Inquiry: Conduct broad research topics to provide summarized answers with citations.

Example Prompts

1. "Search for the latest breakthroughs in fusion energy from the past month and summarize the key findings."
2. "Find high-quality large-sized images of renewable energy projects and provide the direct URLs."
3. "Look up current news articles about the OpenClaw framework update released this week."

Tips & Limitations

• Precision Filtering: Always use the --time-range flag when searching for news to avoid stale results.
• Data Volume: Start with a lower --max-results count for general queries to optimize processing speed, and increase it only when performing deep research.
• Visual Metadata: Utilize the image-color and image-size parameters to reduce the need for manual filtering of search results.
• Network dependency: Note that this skill is dependent on live connectivity; if the search engine service is temporarily throttled or unavailable, the agent may return empty results. Ensure your firewall allows outbound requests to DuckDuckGo APIs.