dsh-searxng-web

dsh-searxng-web

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DeepSeek Harness plugin
that backs the native web_search / web_fetch tools with your own
self-hosted SearXNG instance — keyless, private,
no third-party search vendor.

model ── web_search ──▶ ctx.web ──▶ searxng-web provider ──▶ your SearXNG ──▶ engines
model ── web_fetch ──▶ ctx.web ──▶ searxng-web-fetch ──▶ target page (SSRF-guarded)

Why

• dsh ships web_search pointed at the DeepSeek cloud search, and mounts no
  fetch provider at all. If you run SearXNG for privacy or offline use, your
  queries still leak to a vendor — until this bundle is installed.
• Unlike an MCP server integration, this rides dsh's own provider seam: the
  model keeps using the short native tool names (web_search, web_fetch),
  every agent and subagent inherits it, and nothing extra runs alongside dsh.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 20

• DeepSeek Harness dsh installed (verified on 0.1.3-alpha.1, latest release; 0.1.2-rc.1 → 0.1.3-alpha.1 no seam changes)

• A reachable SearXNG instance with JSON output enabled
  (settings.yml → search.formats: [html, json]), verified by:

  curl 'http://YOUR_SEARXNG:8080/search?q=test&format=json'
  

Install

From npm (recommended)

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-searxng-web

(Replace web with your profile, e.g. tui.) Published from CI with
Sigstore provenance; the package ships a prebuilt lib/, so nothing needs
to be compiled or allowlisted on install.

or from the repository / a tarball:

dsh plugin --profile web add ./dsh-searxng-web        # source checkout
dsh plugin --profile web add ./dsh-searxng-web-0.5.5.tgz
dsh plugin --profile web add github:maxwell-feng/dsh-searxng-web
# or pin a commit:
dsh plugin --profile web add github:maxwell-feng/dsh-searxng-web#<sha>

Git installs fetch sources: the repository commits the compiled lib/
output, so git installs load without any build step — there is no prepare
script, so pnpm allowBuilds is never needed either.

Upgrading

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-searxng-web@latest
# or from git, to pick up changes before they reach npm:
dsh plugin --profile web add github:maxwell-feng/dsh-searxng-web

0.2.x configurations keep working unchanged — every field added since is
optional with identical defaults. Since 0.3.0 configuration is validated at
load time (Schemastery schema), a mistyped key fails the boot with an
actionable error instead of being silently ignored. 0.4.0 adds the optional
baseUrls failover list; single-baseUrl setups are unaffected. 0.5.0
adapts to deepseek-harness 0.1.2-alpha.1 (fiber-scoped provider
disposers, post-redirect url reporting) — no config changes required.
0.5.3 adapts to deepseek-harness 0.1.2-alpha.2 — the seam and config
rows are unchanged, only the dependency pins move.
0.5.4 adapts to deepseek-harness 0.1.2-alpha.3 — packages/web moved
only its version pins in that release, so again no config changes required.
0.5.5 verifies against 0.1.2-alpha.4 (latest master): seam unchanged,
no config migration.

Installing does three things (via the bundled patch layer):

1. inserts the searxng-web plugin row;
2. points ctx.web at its search/fetch providers;
3. re-enables web_fetch (tool-web.fetch).

Then boot as usual:

dsh --profile web

Usage

New sessions now answer "search xxx" through your instance — no tool-name changes:

• web_search → ctx.web → searxng-web → your SearXNG → configured engines
• web_fetch → ctx.web → searxng-web-fetch → target page (SSRF-guarded, HTML→text)

Verify any time:

dsh --profile web --dump-config | grep -A5 searxng
# or inside a session: call web_search "test" and inspect sources[].url

GUI: Settings → Web Search shows provider readiness.

Pointing at your instance

The default base URL is http://127.0.0.1:8080. Override it (and anything
else) in your profile's cordis.patch.yml — the user layer applies after
bundle layers:

- id: searxng-web
  config:
    baseUrl: 'http://10.42.1.159:8080'
    timeoutMs: 15000        # per-search budget, ms
    fetchTimeoutMs: 30000   # per-fetch budget, ms
    fetchMaxChars: 200000   # cap on web_fetch output characters
    ssrfGuard: true         # refuse private/loopback fetch targets
    search:                 # forwarded to SearXNG on every query (all optional)
      language: ''          # e.g. 'zh-CN', 'en'
      safesearch: 0         # 0 off, 1 moderate, 2 strict
      # categories: 'general'   # 'news', 'it,science', ...
      # engines: ''             # 'google,bing,ddg', ...
      # timeRange: ''           # 'day' | 'week' | 'month' | 'year'

Patch rows replace config wholesale (no deep merge) — restate keys you want
to keep when overriding.

Triple-stack endpoints with automatic failover (0.4.0+)

Home instances often live behind several doors at once — a public IPv4, a
public IPv6 and a LAN address. baseUrls takes an ordered list and fails
over automatically:

- id: searxng-web
  config:
    baseUrls:
      - 'http://203.0.113.10:8081/s/<KEY>'      # public IPv4
      - 'http://[2409:8a55:…]:8081/s/<KEY>'     # public IPv6
      - 'http://192.168.10.144:8081/s/<KEY>'    # LAN (same door, same key)
    timeoutMs: 15000

Semantics:

• Sticky: attempts always start at the last endpoint that succeeded, so a
  healthy door is never re-probed after an earlier entry had a hiccup.
• Fail fast on the wire only: connection refused / unreachable / timeout /
  DNS failure advance to the next endpoint. Any HTTP answer (200, 403, 502…)
  proves that door is alive and its status is surfaced as-is — no silent
  masking of auth problems.
• One full pass over the list per call; if every endpoint is unreachable you
  get a single network error.
• baseUrls wins when both it and baseUrl are set; baseUrl alone keeps
  working exactly as before.

Configuration reference

Key	Default	Description
baseUrl	http://127.0.0.1:8080	SearXNG instance URL
baseUrls	(unset)	Ordered endpoint list with sticky automatic failover (0.4.0+); takes precedence over baseUrl when non-empty — see "Triple-stack endpoints" above
timeoutMs	15000	Per-search attempt budget (ms)
fetchTimeoutMs	30000	Per-fetch attempt budget (ms)
fetchMaxChars	200000	Max characters returned by web_fetch
ssrfGuard	true	Refuse private/loopback/link-local/CGNAT fetch targets
search.language	(unset)	SearXNG language param
search.safesearch	0	SearXNG safesearch param
search.categories	(unset)	SearXNG categories param
search.engines	(unset)	SearXNG engines param
search.timeRange	(unset)	SearXNG time_range param
headers	(unset)	Extra HTTP headers attached to SearXNG requests only (e.g. X-API-Key gates) — never sent to web_fetch targets
basicAuth.username / basicAuth.password	(unset)	Basic-auth credentials for instances behind an authenticating reverse proxy (caddy basic_auth, nginx auth_basic)

API keys & authenticated reverse proxies

Three supported ways to put a gate in front of the instance. Credentials
configured here ride only on requests to your SearXNG instance;
web_fetch targets (model-chosen third-party pages) always stay
credential-free.

1. Header gate (recommended for API consumers):

   config:
     baseUrl: 'http://searx.internal:8080'
     headers:
       X-API-Key: 'your-key'
   

   Pair it with a caddy check, e.g.
   caddy-l4/forward_auth
   or a small middleware that compares the header.

2. Basic-auth reverse proxy (caddy basic_auth, nginx auth_basic):

   config:
     baseUrl: 'http://searx.internal:8080'
     basicAuth:
       username: 'searxng'
       password: 'hunter2'
   

   Setting both basicAuth and a user-supplied headers.Authorization
   fails at load time with an actionable error.

3. Path-prefix key (no plugin config needed): if your reverse proxy
   strips a secret prefix before proxying, just include it in baseUrl,
   e.g. baseUrl: 'http://host:8081/s/<KEY>'. Works because the search
   adapter appends /search?... to whatever base you give it.

Node's fetch refuses URLs that embed credentials (http://user:pass@…),
which is why auth lives in dedicated config fields instead of baseUrl.

Behavior notes & limits

• Search: maps SearXNG results to {url, title?, snippet?, publishedAt?}
  and surfaces the SearXNG answer line when present.
• Fetch: GET with a browser-ish User-Agent; HTML is reduced to readable
  text; output capped at fetchMaxChars (truncated flag set).
• SSRF guard: validates the initial target only — redirects are followed
  without re-validation (v1 limitation). The guard also blocks non-http(s)
  protocols and unresolvable hosts. Disable only on closed deployments.
• Proxy: uses Node's global fetch, which ignores system proxies and
  proxy env vars by default — SearXNG traffic always goes direct. Provider
  APIs behind a proxy are unaffected because this plugin talks only to your
  instance and fetched pages.
• 403 from SearXNG: JSON output is disabled on the instance — see
  Requirements above.

Migrating from an MCP-based SearXNG integration

If you previously wired SearXNG through an MCP server (e.g.
mcp-searxng via a
dsh-mcp-client row), remove that integration when you install this plugin:

• The model would otherwise see two overlapping search tools (native
  web_search and mcp__searxng__searxng_web_search) plus several extra
  schemas — ambiguous tool selection and ~1–2k tokens of per-request
  overhead for no search-quality gain (both hit the same instance).
• To remove: delete the dsh-mcp-client insert row from your profile's
  cordis.patch.yml (HMR unregisters the tools immediately) and optionally
  npm uninstall -g mcp-searxng.

What you give up: the MCP reader's PDF extraction and section filtering.
The native web_fetch covers plain HTML/text pages; if you later need PDF
reading again, re-adding the MCP row takes minutes.

Uninstall

dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-searxng-web

Removes both the dependency and the bundle layer. ctx.web falls back to
the base composition (DeepSeek search, no fetch provider).

Development

The plugin is written in TypeScript (src/index.ts); the compiled
lib/index.js is committed so installs never need a build.

npm install          # dev dependencies (typescript, @types/node, cordis types)
npm run build        # compile src/ → lib/
npm test             # build + self-contained offline test suite (mock SearXNG)

Release process (maintainers)

Bump version in package.json, add a CHANGELOG.md entry, then:

git commit -am "release: vX.Y.Z"
git tag vX.Y.Z
git push --follow-tags

GitHub Actions runs the standalone test suite and publishes to npm via OIDC
trusted publishing (Sigstore provenance) — the same pipeline as
dsh-windows-ocr.

License

MIT