| 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.
