ddgs

name	ddgs
description	DuckDuckGo Search — free general web search with no auth, use as broad default for any English or mixed query.
version	1
languages	["en","mixed"]
methods	[{"id":"text_search","impl":"methods/api.py","requires":[],"rate_limit":{"per_min":60,"per_hour":1000}}]
fallback_chain	["text_search"]
when_to_use	{"query_languages":["en","mixed"],"query_types":["general","news","product","how-to"],"avoid_for":["deep-technical-papers","chinese-content"]}
quality_hint	{"typical_yield":"medium","chinese_native":false}
layer	leaf
domains	["generic-web"]
scenarios	["general-search","fallback","keyword-lookup"]
model_tier	Fast
experience_digest	experience.md

Overview

General-purpose web search via DuckDuckGo. No API key required, no cookie. Serves as the always-on broad default for English and mixed-language queries where more specialized channels may not cover the topic.

When to Choose It

• First-line web discovery before specialized channels
• Queries where platform-specific coverage (github, arxiv, HN) is unlikely to help
• Mixed-domain topics that need broad source variety

How To Search (Planned)

text_search — calls the ddgs PyPI package (renamed from duckduckgo-search). Sync API wrapped in asyncio.to_thread. Returns {title, href, body} hits mapped to Evidence with 500-char snippet truncation.

Known Quirks

• DDGS occasionally returns empty results during rate limit; channel returns [] and logs warn without crashing pipeline.
• Result URLs may redirect; we keep the original href (no unwrap).

Quality Bar

• Evidence items have non-empty title and url.
• No crash on empty or malformed API response.
• Source channel field matches the channel name.