A procedure for searching the internet with DuckDuckGo or Google and returning structured results.

It is for searching topics, finding current information, and summarising several web results with their URLs.

It gives an agent a fallback when its usual web-search tool is unavailable and helps it check that a search actually returned results.

web-search — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by alpsmonkey/SkillFather

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add alpsmonkey/SkillFather --skill sample_hermes

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alpsmonkey/SkillFather

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alpsmonkey/skillfather/sample_hermes/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alpsmonkey/skillfather/sample_hermes)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alpsmonkey/skillfather/sample_hermes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alpsmonkey/skillfather/sample_hermes/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alpsmonkey/skillfather/sample_hermes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alpsmonkey/skillfather/sample_hermes.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 395 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00022	$0.00395
Opus 5.5	$0.00009	$0.00158
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00004	$0.00079
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00040

Measured 2mo ago against content hash d5f7b8bbfac0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

web-search scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

examples/sample_hermes_skill.md · 58 lines

What it actually says

Web Search

When to Use

Use this skill when the user asks to search the web, look up information, or find current data about a topic. This skill activates as a fallback when the built-in web_search tool is unavailable.

Quick Reference

Method	Command	Notes
DuckDuckGo	`!ddg <query>`	Default, no API key needed
Google (via DDG)	`!ddg -g <query>`	Better for recent results
Lucky	`!ddg -l <query>`	Go to first result

Procedure

Parse the user's search query
Run the appropriate search command
Parse the results (JSON format)
Summarize the top 5-10 results
Present findings with URLs

Pitfalls

Rate limiting: DDG free tier allows ~30 requests/minute
JSON parsing: handle malformed responses gracefully
Encoding: some results may contain Unicode characters

Verification

Confirm the search returned results by checking the result count in the JSON response.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 58 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A d5f7b8bbfac0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

web-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository alpsmonkey/SkillFather (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 395 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-04.

Research

web-search next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
web-searchalpsmonkey/SkillFather	Skill	2	2mo ago	MIT	A	22	Claude Code, Codex
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	134k	today	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	today	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	99k	today	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	314k	3d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	today	MIT	A	95	Claude Code
chat-pet-sprite-creationmicrosoft/vscode	Skill	195k	today	MIT	A	53	Claude Code, Codex