Ceramic Search

Web-scale search for your OpenClaw agent, powered by Ceramic — 100x cheaper and 10x faster than standard search APIs, with a 40B+ page index.

The plugin registers ceramic_search as a native agent tool. Under the hood, the tool rewrites natural language queries into optimized keyword queries using an internal LLM call, then hits the Ceramic Search API directly.

1. Install the plugin:

openclaw plugins install clawhub:@ceramicai/openclaw-ceramic-search

2. Set your API key: Get a Ceramic API key for free at platform.ceramic.ai/keys and set it:

openclaw config set plugins.entries.ceramic-search.config.apiKey your_api_key_here

3. Allow the plugin and expose the tool:

openclaw config set plugins.allow '["ceramic-search"]' --strict-json
openclaw config set tools.alsoAllow '["ceramic_search"]' --strict-json

4. Modify TOOLS.md:

Add the following to ~/.openclaw/workspace/TOOLS.md (create the file if it doesn't exist) to ensure Ceramic search gets used:

## Web Search

Always use the `ceramic_search` tool for web searches. Do not use built-in model web search or any other search tool.

5. Disable competing web search tools:

openclaw config set tools.deny '["web_search"]' --strict-json

This prevents the agent from using built-in model search and forces it to follow the skill's instructions instead.

6. Restart the gateway:

openclaw gateway restart

7. Test it:

openclaw agent --agent main --message "What are the top AI news stories right now?"

A successful run will show the agent invoking ceramic_search with a keyword query and returning a cited answer.

Tool Information

The ceramic_search tool accepts a natural language query and handles the rest:

1. Query rewriting — an internal LLM call converts the natural language query into 1–3 optimised keyword queries for Ceramic's lexical search engine.
2. Parallel search — all keyword queries are run in parallel against the Ceramic Search API.
3. Deduplication — results are merged and deduplicated by URL.