Genesis Docs

Genesis 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

```bash
genesis 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

query (string)

Search query.

count (number)

Results to return (1–10).

region (string)

DuckDuckGo region code (e.g. us-en, uk-en, de-de).

safeSearch ('strict' | 'moderate' | 'off')

SafeSearch level.

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](/tools/brave-search) (free tier available) or another API-backed provider.

Related