Web Search

Nginjen includes a built-in self-contained web search engine. No API keys, no external paid services. Zero cost.

Backends

Backend	CLI Flag	Source	Notes
DuckDuckGo Lite	--backend lite	HTML scraper	Default. No API key.
Bing	--backend bing	HTML scraper	cite-breadcrumb URL extraction
Brave	--backend brave	HTML scraper	Clean URLs, no tracking redirects
Meta	--backend meta	All 3 concurrently	Interleave + dedupe results
SearXNG	--backend searxng	Self-hosted aggregator	Requires SearXNG instance

CLI Usage

# DuckDuckGo (default)
nginjen search "rust async runtime"

# Meta-search (all backends, interleaved)
nginjen search "rust async" --backend meta --limit 20

# Brave only
nginjen search "best rust crates" --backend brave --limit 5

API Usage

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:9090/search \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "query": "rust web scraping",
    "limit": 10,
    "backend": "meta"
  }'

Response:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Web Scraping in Rust",
      "url": "https://example.com/rust-scraping",
      "snippet": "A comprehensive guide to..."
    }
  ],
  "total": 10,
  "backend": "meta"
}

Meta-Search Strategy

When you use --backend meta, Nginjen fans out to DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Brave concurrently, then:

1. Collects results from all three
2. Interleaves them in round-robin order
3. Deduplicates by normalized URL
4. Returns up to limit results

This gives broader coverage than any single backend.

SearXNG Integration (Optional)

For even broader coverage, connect Nginjen to a self-hosted SearXNG instance:

# Quick SearXNG setup
cd integrations/hermes/searxng-setup
echo "SEARXNG_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Then in your config:

[search]
backend = "searxng"
searxng_url = "http://localhost:8080"

SearXNG aggregates dozens of search engines, giving you the widest possible coverage through a single API.