dsh-searxng

A DeepSeek Harness (dsh) plugin that registers a SearXNG-backed search provider into the web capability seam (ctx.web), giving your agent web_search through a free, self-hosted, key-less metasearch instance — instead of the paid Exa/Perplexity APIs.

Install

dsh plugin add dsh-searxng

(With a named profile: dsh plugin --profile <name> add dsh-searxng.)

Quick start

1. Run a SearXNG instance with the JSON format enabled. If you installed only the plugin, clone the repository example first:

   git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rogerdigital/dsh-searxng.git dsh-searxng-example
   docker compose -f dsh-searxng-example/examples/docker/docker-compose.yml up -d
   curl 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/search?q=test&format=json'
   

   From an existing source checkout, you can instead run docker compose up -d in examples/docker. This repository example is loopback-only and pre-configures search.formats with json — the one setting most public instances deliberately disable.

2. Point the plugin at it. Either set an environment variable before launching dsh:

   export SEARXNG_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080
   dsh
   

   …or override the plugin row in your profile's cordis.patch.yml ($DSH_HOME/profiles/<name>/cordis.patch.yml):

   - id: web-search-searxng
     config:
       baseURL: http://127.0.0.1:8080
       language: zh-CN
   

3. Ask your agent something that needs the web. If this is the only search provider you have installed, the seam auto-selects it. If you also have Exa/Perplexity installed, select it explicitly with export DSH_WEB_SEARCH_PROVIDER=searxng (or set searchProvider: searxng in the web row's config).

Until baseURL is set, the provider registers as unavailable — no public instance is assumed, because most disable the JSON format and rate-limit heavily.

Configuration

All keys are optional; all live on the web-search-searxng row's config.

Key	Default	Meaning
baseURL	$SEARXNG_BASE_URL	Base URL of the instance, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8080. Must be http(s), contain no query or fragment, and have json in search.formats.
language	none	Locale passed as SearXNG's language parameter, e.g. zh-CN, en-US.
engines	none	Comma-separated engine allowlist, e.g. bing,duckduckgo.
categories	none	Comma-separated category filter, e.g. general,it.
authHeader	none	Authorization header value, for instances fronted by an API-key gate. Sent verbatim.

The result count is not configurable here: dsh-tool-web owns the bound (searchMaxResults, default 8) and the seam truncates to it.

Troubleshooting

• HTTP 403 — the instance does not enable the JSON format. Add json to search.formats in its settings.yml (see the repository example), then restart the instance.
• HTTP 429 — the instance's rate limiter. For a local instance set limiter: false, or raise its limits.
• Provider unavailable / never selected — baseURL is not set, is not an absolute http(s) URL, or contains a query or fragment.
• WEB_PROVIDER_AMBIGUOUS — more than one search provider is installed and available; select one via DSH_WEB_SEARCH_PROVIDER=searxng.

Compatibility

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