DuckDuckGo Search

Velaclaw supports DuckDuckGo as a key-free web_search provider. No API key or account is required.

DuckDuckGo is an experimental, unofficial integration that pulls results from DuckDuckGo’s non-JavaScript search pages — not an official API. Expect occasional breakage from bot-challenge pages or HTML changes.

Setup

No API key needed — just set DuckDuckGo as your provider:

Configure

velaclaw configure --section web
# Select "duckduckgo" as the provider

Config

{
  tools: {
    web: {
      search: {
        provider: "duckduckgo",
      },
    },
  },
}

Optional plugin-level settings for region and SafeSearch:

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      duckduckgo: {
        config: {
          webSearch: {
            region: "us-en", // DuckDuckGo region code
            safeSearch: "moderate", // "strict", "moderate", or "off"
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Tool parameters

Parameter	Description
`query`	Search query (required)
`count`	Results to return (1-10, default: 5)
`region`	DuckDuckGo region code (e.g. `us-en`, `uk-en`, `de-de`)
`safeSearch`	SafeSearch level: `strict`, `moderate` (default), or `off`

Region and SafeSearch can also be set in plugin config (see above) — tool parameters override config values per-query.

Notes

No API key — works out of the box, zero configuration
Experimental — gathers results from DuckDuckGo’s non-JavaScript HTML search pages, not an official API or SDK
Bot-challenge risk — DuckDuckGo may serve CAPTCHAs or block requests under heavy or automated use
HTML parsing — results depend on page structure, which can change without notice
Auto-detection order — DuckDuckGo is the first key-free fallback (order 100) in auto-detection. API-backed providers with configured keys run first, then Ollama Web Search (order 110), then SearXNG (order 200)
SafeSearch defaults to moderate when not configured

For production use, consider Brave Search (free tier available) or another API-backed provider.

Web Search overview — all providers and auto-detection
Brave Search — structured results with free tier
Exa Search — neural search with content extraction

Overview

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DuckDuckGo Search

DuckDuckGo Search

Setup

Config

Tool parameters

Notes

​DuckDuckGo Search

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DuckDuckGo Search

Setup

Config

Tool parameters

Notes

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