BrowserUse_and_ComputerUse_skills/skills/research/duckduckgo-search/SKILL.md

name	description	version	author	license	metadata
duckduckgo-search	Get web search results from DuckDuckGo. Use as fallback when Firecrawl unavailable. No API key needed.	1.0.0	Hermes Agent	MIT	hermes tags related_skills Search DuckDuckGo Web Search API Free arxiv ocr-and-documents

DuckDuckGo Search

Fast, free web search. No API key required. Use when Firecrawl is unavailable.

Quick Reference

Action	Command
Web search	ddgs text "python async" -k 5
Images	ddgs images "cat"
News	ddgs news "AI"
Videos	ddgs videos "tutorial"
Curl fallback	curl "https://api.duckduckgo.com/?q=QUERY&format=json"

Prerequisites

Option 1: Python Library (Recommended)

pip install ddgs
ddgs --help

Option 2: Curl Only (No Dependencies)

# Verify curl is available
curl --version

No installation needed — curl is standard on all platforms.

Web Search

Library (ddgs)

# Basic search
ddgs text "python async programming" -k 5

# With region filter
ddgs text "best restaurants Tokyo" -k 3 -r jp-jp

# Safe search
ddgs text "medical advice" -k 5 -s off

Parameters

Flag	Description	Example
-k	Max results	-k 5
-r	Region	-r us-en
-s	Safe search	-s off

Curl Fallback

# Basic search
curl -s "https://api.duckduckgo.com/?q=python+async&format=json&limit=5"

# Parse results
curl -s "..." | jq -r '.RelatedTopics[] | "\(.Text) - \(.FirstURL)"'

Other Search Types

# Images
ddgs images "landscape" -k 10

# News
ddgs news "artificial intelligence" -k 5

# Videos  
ddgs videos "python tutorial" -k 5

Integration

After finding URLs, retrieve full content with web_extract:

# Find with DDG, then extract
ddgs text "fastapi tutorial" -k 3
# Copy URL from output
web_extract(urls=["https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/"])

This is the standard pattern:

1. DuckDuckGo → finds URLs
2. web_extract → retrieves full content

Use Cases

Scenario	Tool	Reason
"Find tutorials on X"	ddgs text + web_extract	Need full content
Firecrawl unavailable	ddgs text	Free fallback
Quick image search	ddgs images	Find images
Latest news	ddgs news	News results

Error Handling

# Check if library installed
ddgs --help 2>/dev/null || echo "Using curl fallback"

# Rate limiting - add delay
sleep 1

# No results - try different query
ddgs text "different keywords" -k 5

Notes

• No API key required — completely free
• Rate limit: ~1 request/second recommended
• Always follow up with web_extract for full content
• Curl fallback has limited results (DDG API restrictions)