web-search
Web search using DuckDuckGo Instant Answer API (no API key required). Use when you need to search the web for information, definitions, calculations, conversions, or quick facts. Also use when user mentions "search", "look up", "find information", "what is", "how to", or "google something". The skill provides instant answers, definitions, abstracts, and related topics without requiring external API credentials.
Why use this skill?
Learn how to use the OpenClaw web-search skill for fast, API-key-free information retrieval from DuckDuckGo. Perfect for developers needing quick facts.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/hahahxx/web-search-instantWhat This Skill Does
The web-search skill integrates the DuckDuckGo Instant Answer API directly into your OpenClaw environment, allowing for rapid information retrieval without the need for complex API keys or subscriptions. Designed for speed and efficiency, it fetches definitions, quick facts, mathematical calculations, and Wikipedia-style abstracts. The tool acts as a bridge between the command line and the vast, structured knowledge base of DuckDuckGo, providing clean outputs that can be easily piped, formatted, or redirected for documentation purposes.
Installation
To integrate this skill into your OpenClaw ecosystem, execute the following command in your terminal:
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/hahahxx/web-search-instant
Once installed, verify the tool is accessible by running ./web-search.sh --help within your skills directory.
Use Cases
This skill is ideal for developers and power users who need instant context without leaving their terminal. It is perfect for:
- Fact-checking technical specifications or programming definitions.
- Quick conversions and basic arithmetic.
- Retrieving Wikipedia abstracts for research summaries.
- Generating structured markdown content for documentation logs.
- Automating information gathering where full browser-based crawling is overkill.
Example Prompts
- "OpenClaw, search for the definition of 'polymorphism' in object-oriented programming."
- "What is the distance between Earth and Mars? Find information for me."
- "Look up how to perform a recursion in Python and save the output to a file called recursion.md."
Tips & Limitations
To maximize the utility of web-search, keep your queries specific; vague terms may return overly broad results or empty sets. When documenting results, always leverage the --format markdown flag to ensure compatibility with your existing documentation pipelines. Note that this tool is not a replacement for a full-featured web crawler. It does not provide real-time news or index the entire live web; instead, it focuses on evergreen, encyclopedic, and transactional data. Furthermore, complex mathematical expressions or extremely obscure niche data points may occasionally return no results. Remember to use --no-color when piping output to logs to ensure file readability, and rely on the source URL provided in the output to conduct deeper, manual research if the instant answer is insufficient for your needs.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-hahahxx-web-search-instant": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: network-access