Free Search Aggregator

Quota-aware multi-provider web search for OpenClaw. Supports 12 search providers with automatic failover, task-level deep search (@dual/@deep), real quota checks, and managed result storage under memory/.

Reliable, provider-diverse web search for OpenClaw with high uptime + low operator overhead.

Why use this skill

• 12 search providers, 6 requiring no API key at all
• Automatic failover: if one provider fails, the next is tried instantly
• Quota-aware: tracks daily usage, warns at 80%, skips exhausted providers
• Task search mode for multi-angle research queries
• Built-in storage lifecycle (cache / index / report), no workspace clutter
• Self-healing: health-based smart routing automatically promotes reliable providers
• Quality optimization: relevance scoring, fuzzy dedup, domain diversity, re-ranking
• Auto-discovery: probes candidate search engines and SearXNG instances for new sources
• Self-diagnostic: doctor and setup commands for zero-friction onboarding

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Provider Overview

Provider	Key Required	Free Quota	Index Source	Notes
brave	BRAVE_API_KEY	2000/day	Brave independent	High quality, privacy-friendly
exa	EXA_API_KEY	~33/day (1k/mo)	Neural + web	Semantic search, unique finds
tavily	TAVILY_API_KEY	1000/day	Web (AI-optimized)	Designed for AI agents
duckduckgo	None	~500/day	Bing + own	No key, privacy-focused
bing_html	None	~300/day	Microsoft Bing RSS	No key, stable XML feed
mojeek	None (or MOJEEK_API_KEY)	200/day	Mojeek independent	Non-Google/Bing index
serper	SERPER_API_KEY	2500/day	Google	High quota free tier
searchapi	SEARCHAPI_API_KEY	100/mo	Google / Bing	Multi-engine
google_cse	GOOGLE_API_KEY + GOOGLE_CX	100/day	Google	Official Google API
baidu	BAIDU_API_KEY	200/day	Baidu	Best for Chinese content
wikipedia	None	1000/day	Wikipedia	Factual/encyclopedic queries
searxng	None	unlimited (self-hosted)	Meta (all engines)	Requires own instance

Total daily quota (all keys configured): 8400+ requests/day

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Credential model (important)

• No mandatory API key — DuckDuckGo + Bing RSS + Mojeek + Wikipedia work out of the box.
• API-key providers fail gracefully if key is missing (AuthError → skip, no quota consumed, no latency):
  • BRAVE_API_KEY
  • EXA_API_KEY
  • TAVILY_API_KEY
  • SERPER_API_KEY
  • SEARCHAPI_API_KEY
  • GOOGLE_API_KEY + GOOGLE_CX
  • BAIDU_API_KEY
  • MOJEEK_API_KEY (optional — without it uses HTML scraping)

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Core capabilities

1. Search failover

Default provider order:

text

brave → exa → tavily → duckduckgo → bing_html → mojeek → serper → searchapi → google_cse → baidu → wikipedia

First successful non-empty result returns immediately.

2. Task-level multi-query search

• Expands one goal into multiple targeted queries
• Aggregates + deduplicates results
• Prefix presets:
  • default: workers=1
  • @dual ... → workers=2
  • @deep ... → workers=3 + deeper query coverage

3. Quota intelligence

• Per-provider daily tracking
• Real quota retrieval where supported (Tavily, SearchAPI, Brave via probe)
• Auto concurrency reduction at 80% quota saturation

4. Provider health monitoring

• Tracks success rate, latency, and error types per provider over time
• Computes health scores (success 50%, latency 30%, freshness 20%)
• Smart ordering: auto-promotes healthy providers, demotes degraded ones
• View dashboard: python -m free_search health

5. Result quality optimization

• Relevance scoring (query-title-snippet token overlap)
• Enhanced dedup: URL + title similarity (Jaccard threshold)
• Domain diversity: limits same-domain results (default max 3)
• Automatic filtering of low-quality results (short titles, missing URLs)

6. Source auto-discovery

• Probes all configured providers for availability
• Scans candidate search engines (Marginalia, Wiby, public SearXNG instances)
• Validates response format, latency, and result quality
• Generates recommendations for new sources to integrate
• Run: python -m free_search discover

7. Managed persistence

• memory/search-cache/YYYY-MM-DD/*.json
• memory/search-index/search-index.jsonl
• memory/search-reports/YYYY-MM-DD/*.md

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Quick commands

bash

# Normal search
scripts/search "latest AI agent frameworks 2026" --max-results 5

# Task search (multi-query, parallel)
scripts/search task "@dual Compare Claude vs GPT-4 for code generation" --max-results 5

# Deep research mode
scripts/search task "@deep autonomous vehicle safety 2026" --max-results 8 --max-queries 10

# Quota status
scripts/status

# Real quota from provider APIs
scripts/remaining --real

# Cleanup cache
python3 -m free_search gc --cache-days 14

# Provider health dashboard
python3 -m free_search health

# Discover new search sources
python3 -m free_search discover

# System diagnostics
python3 -m free_search doctor

# Setup status & recommendations
python3 -m free_search setup

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Provider setup guides

Bing RSS (bing_html) — No key needed

Uses Bing's built-in RSS endpoint (format=rss) — bypasses bot detection. Works out of the box.

Mojeek — No key needed (API key optional)

Out-of-the-box HTML scraping. For higher quotas/stability:

1. Register at https://www.mojeek.com/services/search/api/
2. Set MOJEEK_API_KEY → automatically switches to JSON API mode

Wikipedia — No key needed

Multilingual support — change lang in providers.yaml:

yaml

wikipedia:
  lang: it   # en | zh | it | de | fr | ja ...

Exa.ai — API key required

1. Register at https://exa.ai/
2. Set EXA_API_KEY
3. Free tier: 1000 searches/month (~33/day)

Google Custom Search — API key + CX required

1. Get API key: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/introduction
2. Create search engine: https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/
3. Set GOOGLE_API_KEY and GOOGLE_CX
4. Free tier: 100 queries/day

Baidu Qianfan — API key required

1. Register at https://cloud.baidu.com/
2. Set BAIDU_API_KEY
3. Best for Chinese-language content

SearXNG — Self-hosted instance required

Public instances rate-limit server-to-server requests. Use your own:

bash

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 searxng/searxng

Then in providers.yaml:

yaml

searxng:
  endpoint: http://localhost:8080
  enabled: true

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Post-install self-check

bash

# 1) Confirm provider load
scripts/status --compact

# 2) Smoke test (uses duckduckgo/bing/mojeek out of the box)
scripts/search "openclaw" --max-results 3 --compact

# 3) Verify storage paths
ls -la /home/openclaw/.openclaw/workspace/memory/search-cache/ | tail -n 5

# 4) Check real quota (optional)
scripts/remaining --real --compact

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Output contract (stable)

• Search: query, provider, results[], meta.attempted, meta.quota
• Task search: task, queries[], grouped_results[], merged_results[], meta
• Quota: date, providers[], totals; with --real: real_quota.providers[]

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Operator notes

• Default mode: workers=1 — conservative for cost control
• Use @dual / @deep only for research tasks
• SearXNG and YaCy are enabled: false by default (self-hosted only)
• MOJEEK_API_KEY is optional — provider gracefully falls back to HTML scraping
• Provider health data stored in memory/provider-health/health.jsonl
• Discovery results stored in memory/provider-discovery/discovery.jsonl
• Run python -m free_search doctor after setup to verify everything works
• Run python -m free_search discover periodically to find new search sources