ddg-search
Search the web using DuckDuckGo. Free, no API key required. Use when the user asks to search the web, look something up, find information online, research a topic, or when you need to find current information that isn't in your training data. Also use when web_search tool is unavailable or has no API key configured.
Why use this skill?
Search the web with DuckDuckGo using the ddg-search skill for OpenClaw. Get free, no-API-key web search results for current information and research.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/neobotjan2026/neo-ddg-searchWhat This Skill Does
The ddg-search skill enables OpenClaw AI to perform web searches using the DuckDuckGo search engine. It leverages the ddgs Python library, which means no API key is required, making it a freely accessible tool for gathering information from the internet. This skill is invaluable when OpenClaw needs to access current information that might not be present in its training data, or when other web search tools are unavailable. It can look up information, research topics, find current events, and generally provide up-to-date knowledge by querying the web.
Each search result returned by this skill includes the page title, a direct URL to the content, and a concise snippet (an excerpt from the page) to give the user a quick overview of the search result. For more in-depth reading, the URLs provided can be subsequently used with a web fetching tool.
Installation
To install the ddg-search skill, you can use the following command, which integrates it into your OpenClaw environment:
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/neobotjan2026/neo-ddg-search
Before installation, ensure you have the necessary Python dependency, the ddgs package, installed in your environment. You can install it using pip:
pip install --break-system-packages ddgs
Use Cases
This skill is ideal for a wide range of scenarios where real-time or external information is needed. Common use cases include:
- Information Retrieval: Looking up facts, definitions, or specific details about any topic.
- Current Events: Staying updated with the latest news, developments, or trends.
- Research: Gathering information for projects, learning new subjects, or comparing data.
- Problem Solving: Finding solutions to technical issues or troubleshooting guides online.
- General Knowledge Augmentation: Supplementing the AI's internal knowledge base with current web data.
- Alternative Search: When the primary
web_searchtool is not configured or accessible.
Example Prompts
Here are examples of how a user might prompt OpenClaw to use the ddg-search skill:
- "Hey OpenClaw, can you search the web for the latest advancements in renewable energy?"
- "Find me some tutorials on how to use the Python
requestslibrary and give me 5 results." - "What are the main differences between quantum computing and classical computing? Look up some articles online."
Tips & Limitations
Tips:
- Combine
ddg-searchwithweb_fetchfor a powerful research workflow: search for information, then fetch and summarize specific pages. - Be specific with your search queries to get the most relevant results.
- Specify the number of results using the optional
countargument if you need more or fewer than the default five.
Limitations:
- Unofficial Scraping: The
ddgslibrary scrapes DuckDuckGo's frontend. Any changes to DuckDuckGo's website structure could potentially break this skill without notice. - Rate Limiting: Heavy or abusive usage might lead to temporary rate limiting by DuckDuckGo.
- Result Bias: Search results are generally biased towards English content by default.
- Result Count: The maximum number of results that can be requested is 20.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-neobotjan2026-neo-ddg-search": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: network-access, data-collection