searxng

What This Skill Does

The SearXNG search skill enables your OpenClaw agent to perform privacy-respecting web searches by leveraging a self-hosted SearXNG instance. Unlike traditional search APIs that track users, SearXNG aggregates results from over 70 distinct search engines—including Google, DuckDuckGo, and Brave—and consolidates them into a unified JSON format for your agent to process. By running this instance locally or on your own server, you maintain complete control over your search history and metadata, ensuring that your agent's queries remain private and insulated from third-party tracking.

Installation

To install this skill, use the command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/clockworksquirrel/searxng-self-hosted. Once installed, ensure you have a running SearXNG instance. You can deploy one rapidly using the provided Docker Compose configuration. Ensure your settings.yml has the JSON API enabled by setting the formats list to include json. Finally, configure the environment variable SEARXNG_URL to point to your instance's address, for example: export SEARXNG_URL="http://localhost:8080".

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for researchers, developers, and privacy-conscious users. You can use it to aggregate technical documentation, perform comprehensive academic research, or monitor multiple news sources simultaneously. Because it supports categorization, you can instruct your agent to query specifically for images, videos, or IT-focused content, making it a versatile tool for complex data gathering tasks that require diverse, unbiased result sets.

Example Prompts

1. "Search for the latest trends in quantum computing and summarize the top three articles found."
2. "Find high-quality tutorial videos on how to configure a Kubernetes cluster using the latest search results from my SearXNG node."
3. "Look up documentation for the Python requests library in the IT category and extract the primary setup steps."

Tips & Limitations

To get the best results, use the 'categories' parameter to filter out irrelevant noise. If your agent is returning too many low-quality results, check your settings.yml to adjust the 'safe_search' or 'engines' configuration. Be aware that since this is a self-hosted instance, the performance and search coverage are limited to the engines you have enabled within your local SearXNG installation. Keep your secret_key private and ensure your Docker container is not exposed to the public web without appropriate authentication measures.