searxng-web-search

name	searxng-web-search
skill_type	skill
description	Privacy-respecting web metasearch via the searxng-mcp MCP server. Use when the agent needs current, open-web results for a query and must NOT leak the query to a single tracking engine — SearXNG aggregates many engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, …) behind one JSON tool. Use for general lookups, fact-finding, and pulling candidate source URLs to read next. Do NOT use for academic papers (use scholarx), for reading one already-known URL's full content (use web-fetch / web-crawler), or for keyless social/forum research (use pulselink-mcp).
license	MIT
tags	["searxng","search","metasearch","web","privacy","mcp"]
metadata	{"author":"Genius","version":"0.1.0"}

SearXNG Web Search

Privacy-respecting metasearch over the searxng-mcp server. One web_search call fans a query across many upstream engines and returns a merged, ranked JSON result set — without exposing the query to any single tracker.

When to use

• Answer "what's out there about X" with fresh open-web results.
• Gather candidate source URLs to hand to web-fetch / web-crawler for full reads.
• Category-scoped search: general, news, science, it, files, images, videos, music, social_media.

When NOT to use

• Academic / preprint literature → scholarx.
• Fetch or scrape the full content of a specific known URL → web-fetch / web-crawler.
• Keyless social-platform research (X, Reddit, YouTube, HN) → pulselink-mcp.
• You want results persisted into the knowledge graph → searxng-kg-ingestion.

Prerequisites & environment

Connect via the mcp-client skill against the searxng-mcp MCP server.

Variable	Required	Notes
SEARXNG_INSTANCE_URL	optional	Instance base URL (alias SEARXNG_URL). Falls back to https://searx.be.
SEARXNG_EMBEDDED	optional	Default true. With no URL configured + the searxng-mcp[embedded] extra installed, spawns+uses a private loopback-only instance BEFORE falling to a random/public one — see searxng-settings-editor.
USE_RANDOM_INSTANCE	optional	If truthy and no URL/embedded instance available, pick a random public instance from the SearXNG instances list.
SEARXNG_USERNAME / SEARXNG_PASSWORD	optional	HTTP basic auth for a protected instance.
SEARXNG_KG_INGEST	optional	Default-on; set falsy to disable the background KG ingest on web_search.
MCP_TOOL_MODE	optional	condensed | verbose | both.

Tools & actions

Tool	Purpose
web_search	Run a metasearch query and return the raw SearXNG JSON.

Key parameters

• query — the search string (required).
• categories — list, e.g. ["news"] or ["science"].
• engines — restrict to specific engines, e.g. ["duckduckgo","wikipedia"].
• language — BCP-47ish code, default en-US.
• pageno — 1-based result page for paging deeper.

Recipes

General search:

{"query": "rootless podman vs docker rootless security"}

Restrict engines + language:

{"query": "traefik vs caddy reverse proxy", "engines": ["duckduckgo", "wikipedia"], "language": "en-US"}

Page 2 of an IT-category search:

{"query": "kubernetes cilium bgp", "categories": ["it"], "pageno": 2}

Gotchas

• The return shape is SearXNG's raw JSON: read the results list (each item has url, title, content, engine, category, score, sometimes publishedDate). Top level also carries number_of_results, suggestions, answers, infoboxes.
• A public instance can rate-limit or block JSON format; set SEARXNG_INSTANCE_URL to a self-hosted instance for reliability, or enable USE_RANDOM_INSTANCE.
• web_search ingests results into the KG by default (best-effort, non-blocking). Disable with SEARXNG_KG_INGEST=false if you want a pure read.
• Results are snippets, not full pages — follow up with web-fetch to read a URL.

Related

• searxng-news-research — the same tool tuned for time-sensitive news monitoring.
• searxng-kg-ingestion — persist results into the epistemic-graph knowledge graph.
• searxng-settings-editor — inspect/edit the embedded instance's settings.yml, or diagnose which instance (embedded / external / random / searx.be) is effective.
• web-fetch / web-crawler — read the full content behind a result URL.