ddg

What This Skill Does

The ddg skill integrates the power of the ddgr command-line utility into the OpenClaw AI agent, enabling privacy-focused, text-based web searches directly from your terminal. Instead of launching a graphical browser, the agent retrieves search results through DuckDuckGo's private search engine, providing clean, readable text outputs. This tool is ideal for users who prioritize privacy and performance, as it bypasses heavy web assets and trackers while offering full support for advanced features like DuckDuckGo bangs, site-specific filtering, and time-based result scoping.

Installation

To integrate this skill, use the command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/instant-picture/ddg. Ensure you have Python 3.8+ installed on your system. For Ubuntu-based environments, it is recommended to install the underlying engine via Snap with sudo snap install ddgr. Alternatively, you can install via PPA or build from the official source repository on GitHub. Once installed, consider aliasing the command in your shell configuration (e.g., alias ddg='snap run ddgr') to streamline your command-line workflow.

Use Cases

This skill is perfect for developers, sysadmins, and power users who need to perform rapid information gathering without leaving their terminal environment. It is particularly effective for documentation lookups, quick fact-checking, and searching across specific domains (e.g., searching only GitHub or StackOverflow). Because it is text-only, it works exceptionally well over SSH connections, slow network environments, or on headless servers where a desktop environment is unavailable.

Example Prompts

1. "Perform a search for 'OpenClaw documentation' and show me the top 3 results."
2. "Search for the latest 'Rust language updates' using the past month as a time filter."
3. "Use a DuckDuckGo bang to find 'How to center a div' on StackOverflow."

Tips & Limitations

To maximize the utility of the ddg skill, use the --num flag to adjust the quantity of results and the --time flag to filter by recency. Keep in mind that as a command-line tool, it processes results as plain text; it cannot render JavaScript-heavy pages or display images. If you need to view a page in full, the tool supports an --interactive mode where you can navigate links directly. Privacy is inherent in this skill, as it does not track user history or profile behavior, making it one of the safest ways to browse the web through your agent.