Instructions for using the bx command-line tool to search the web with Brave Search. It returns extracted search context for questions that need current or outside information.

Searching for documentation, current facts, explanations, and other web-based information through the terminal.

It gives the agent one prescribed way to search and a fallback when the preferred search command cannot handle the request.

bx-search — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by brave

About the project

Brave Search API Skills is a collection of agent skills that gives AI coding agents access to the Brave Search API. It is intended for agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Gemini CLI, and other tools supporting the Agent Skills standard. The catalogue add-ons are the project's own skills and configuration guidance for using Brave Search.

brave/brave-search-skills · 196 stars · on GitHub · api.search.brave.com

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 brave/brave-search-skills --skill bx-search

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brave/brave-search-skills

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/brave/brave-search-skills/bx-search/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/brave/brave-search-skills/bx-search)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/brave/brave-search-skills/bx-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/brave/brave-search-skills/bx-search/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/brave/brave-search-skills/bx-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/brave/brave-search-skills/bx-search.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 98 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 4,105 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan C 2 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	$0.00098	$0.04105
Opus 5.5	$0.00039	$0.01642
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00020	$0.00821
Haiku 4.5	$0.00010	$0.00411

Measured 2mo ago against content hash deba80ea1d94, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

bx-search scanned grade C with 2 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.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brave/brave-search-cli/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brave/brave-search-cli/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

clawhub/bx-search/SKILL.md · 375 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 375 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

bx — Brave Search CLI

Agent Directive

When this skill is active, use bx via exec for all web searches. Do not use the built-in web_search tool. Run bx context "query" as the default — it returns pre-extracted, token-budgeted content ready for use. Fall back to bx answers for synthesized explanations or bx web when search operators are needed.

A zero-dependency, token-efficient CLI for the Brave Search API, built for AI agents and LLMs.

One binary, JSON in/out, no runtime dependencies. The default subcommand is context — bare bx "query" is equivalent to bx context "query". It replaces search + scrape + extract in a single call with token-budgeted output — purpose-built for RAG and LLM grounding.

Quick Start

macOS/Linux

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brave/brave-search-cli/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell)

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brave/brave-search-cli/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex"

bx config set-key YOUR_API_KEY    # get a key at https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com
bx "your search query"
bx --help                        # see all commands; bx <command> --help for flags

Getting an API Key

Sign up at https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/register
Choose a plan — all plans include $5/month free credits (~1,000 free queries). Different endpoints may require different plans.
Go to "API Keys" in the dashboard, generate a key (shown once — save it)

Configuring the API Key

Three methods, in priority order:

Priority	Method	Example
1 (highest)	`--api-key` flag	`bx --api-key KEY web "test"`
2	`BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY` env var	`export BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY=KEY`
3	Config file	`bx config set-key KEY`

The config file is stored at ~/.config/brave-search/api_key (Linux), ~/Library/Application Support/brave-search/api_key (macOS), or %APPDATA%\brave-search\api_key (Windows).

Read the full file on GitHub · 375 lines

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 · 375 lines · 98 tokens per session scan C deba80ea1d94

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bx-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository brave/brave-search-skills (196 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 98 tokens to every session and 4,105 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (downloads and executes remote code, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Research

bx-search next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
bx-searchbrave/brave-search-skills	Skill	196	4d ago	MIT	C	98	Claude Code, Codex
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	134k	today	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	yesterday	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	100k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
browser-automationopenclaw/openclaw	Skill	394k	today	MIT	A	36	Claude Code
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	314k	4d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	today	MIT	A	95	Claude Code

bx-search