duckduckgo-search

duckduckgo-search is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from NousResearch/hermes-agent. It costs 19 tokens per session (2,148 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A free web, news, and image search tool that uses DuckDuckGo without requiring an API key.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for ordinary web searches, news searches, and image searches from an agent workflow.
Why use it?
It provides a terminal-friendly way to look up current information when another search service is unavailable or unsuitable.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it for ordinary web searches, news searches, and image searches from an agent workflow.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/duckduckgo-search
About the project

Hermes Agent is an AI assistant that learns from its use by creating and improving skills, retaining knowledge, searching past conversations, and adapting to its users. It is for people who want to run an agent through a terminal or messaging platforms while connecting it to different AI models and scheduled tasks.

NousResearch/hermes-agent · 244,603 stars · on GitHub · hermes-agent.nousresearch.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 NousResearch/hermes-agent --skill duckduckgo-search
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

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.

agentmods badge for duckduckgo-search

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/duckduckgo-search/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/duckduckgo-search)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/duckduckgo-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/duckduckgo-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.

agentmods 80×15 button for duckduckgo-search

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/duckduckgo-search"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/duckduckgo-search.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 19 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,148 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Snyk warn 7 Sept 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00019 $0.02148
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.01074
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00430
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00215

Measured 8d ago against content hash ea5ee32dee8b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

duckduckgo-search scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 8d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/duckduckgo.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Makes network callslowCapability

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

DuckDuckGo returns titles, URLs, and snippets — not full page content. To get full page content, search first and then extract the most relevant URL with `web_extract`, browser tools, or curl.
Origin

Copies of this mod

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

optional-skills/research/duckduckgo-search/SKILL.md · 239 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 239 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Free web search using DuckDuckGo. No API key required.

Preferred when web_search is unavailable or unsuitable (for example when FIRECRAWL_API_KEY is not set). Can also be used as a standalone search path when DuckDuckGo results are specifically desired.

Detection Flow

Check what is actually available before choosing an approach:

# Check CLI availability
command -v ddgs >/dev/null && echo "DDGS_CLI=installed" || echo "DDGS_CLI=missing"

Decision tree:

  1. If ddgs CLI is installed, prefer terminal + ddgs
  2. If ddgs CLI is missing, do not assume execute_code can import ddgs
  3. If the user wants DuckDuckGo specifically, install ddgs first in the relevant environment
  4. Otherwise fall back to built-in web/browser tools

Important runtime note:

  • Terminal and execute_code are separate runtimes
  • A successful shell install does not guarantee execute_code can import ddgs
  • Never assume third-party Python packages are preinstalled inside execute_code

Installation

Install ddgs only when DuckDuckGo search is specifically needed and the runtime does not already provide it.

# Python package + CLI entrypoint
pip install ddgs

# Verify CLI
ddgs --help

If a workflow depends on Python imports, verify that same runtime can import ddgs before using from ddgs import DDGS.

Method 1: CLI Search (Preferred)

Use the ddgs command via terminal when it exists. This is the preferred path because it avoids assuming the execute_code sandbox has the ddgs Python package installed.

# Text search
ddgs text -q "python async programming" -m 5

# News search
ddgs news -q "artificial intelligence" -m 5

# Image search
ddgs images -q "landscape photography" -m 10

# Video search
ddgs videos -q "python tutorial" -m 5

# With region filter
ddgs text -q "best restaurants" -m 5 -r us-en

# Recent results only (d=day, w=week, m=month, y=year)
ddgs text -q "latest AI news" -m 5 -t w

# JSON output for parsing
ddgs text -q "fastapi tutorial" -m 5 -o json

Read the full file on GitHub · 239 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 239 lines · 19 tokens per session scan A ea5ee32dee8b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

duckduckgo-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository NousResearch/hermes-agent (244,603 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 19 tokens to every session and 2,148 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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