DuckDuckGo Web Search

This skill provides a practical, API-key-free web search capability by driving DuckDuckGo Lite through web_fetch, making it a strong fallback or even primary option when standard web_search isn’t available. It fits well into typical OpenClaw workflows: construct a DDG Lite URL with a URL-encoded query, optional regional kl parameter, and appropriate maxChars, then parse text-only results to identify useful links for follow-up fetches. Recommended scenarios: - As a fallback whenever the main web_search tool fails with a missing_brave_api_key or similar configuration issues. - For general-purpose, text-focused web research where images, videos, and strict date filters are not essential. - For region-aware searches using kl (e.g., au-en, us-en), especially when you need results localized to a country/language. Key strengths include zero setup (no keys), a lightweight HTML interface, and clear instructions for search-then-fetch patterns. Main risks and limitations are: - Dependence on DuckDuckGo Lite’s HTML structure and availability; layout changes or anti-bot measures could degrade reliability. - No robust time/date filtering and no support for media searches (images, video), which may be critical in some tasks. - Initial results can include sponsored links that must be filtered out by the tool-using agent. Overall, this is a solid, low-friction web search skill that is particularly valuable as a resilient backup and for simple, text-centric browsing tasks, but it should not be relied on for advanced filtering, media retrieval, or guaranteed long-term stability of the result format.