name: ddg-search
description: Web search without an API key using DuckDuckGo Lite via webfetch. Use as a fallback when websearch fails with missingbraveapikey error, or whenever you need to search the web and no search API is configured. Provides titles, URLs, and snippets for research queries. Zero dependencies — works with just the built-in webfetch tool.

DuckDuckGo Search via web_fetch

Search the web using DuckDuckGo Lite's HTML interface, parsed via web_fetch. No API key or package install required.

How to Search

web_fetch(url="https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=QUERY", extractMode="text", maxChars=8000)

• URL-encode the query — use + for spaces
• Use extractMode="text" (not markdown) for clean results
• Increase maxChars for more results

Region Filtering

Append &kl=REGION for regional results:

• au-en — Australia
• us-en — United States
• uk-en — United Kingdom
• de-de — Germany
• fr-fr — France

Full list: https://duckduckgo.com/params

Example — Australian search

web_fetch(url="https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=best+coffee+melbourne&kl=au-en", extractMode="text", maxChars=8000)

Reading Results

Results appear as numbered items with title, snippet, and URL. Skip entries marked "Sponsored link" (ads) — organic results follow.

Search-then-Fetch Pattern

1. Search — query DDG Lite for a list of results
2. Pick — identify the most relevant URLs
3. Fetch — use web_fetch on those URLs to read full content

Tips

• First 1-2 results may be ads — skip to organic results
• For exact phrases, wrap in quotes: q=%22exact+phrase%22
• Add specific terms to narrow results (site name, year, location)

Limitations

• No time/date filtering (DDG Lite doesn't support &df= reliably via fetch)
• Text results only — no images or videos
• Results sourced from Bing (may differ from Google)
• Google search does NOT work via web_fetch (captcha blocked)