Web search

Variable	Required	Default	Description
SEARXNG_URL	no	http://localhost:8888	Where the SearXNG instance behind web_search listens.

web_search searches the web and returns five results — title, link, snippet — through a bundled SearXNG instance. Without it the agent can only answer from what the model already knows, which was fixed when the model was trained. With it, it can check what is true today.

There is nothing to set up: make install starts the SearXNG container, and SEARXNG_URL already points at it.

SearXNG queries other search engines on your behalf and holds no account of its own, which is why this needs no API key and no signup — there is no company on the other end building a profile from what you look up.

The bundled instanceUse your own

make install and make doctor treat it exactly like Redis: started if it is not already running, left alone if it is. To manage it by hand:

docker compose up -d searxng     # start
docker compose stop searxng      # stop

Mycel checks the instance at startup and only offers the tool if it answers, so a stopped container means an agent that knows it cannot search, rather than one that tries and fails.

Any SearXNG instance works, as long as its settings allow JSON output:

search:
  formats:
    - html
    - json

JSON is off by default, and without it every search comes back 403. The bot limiter answers programmatic requests the same way, so leave server.limiter: false on an instance only you can reach.

SEARXNG_URL=https://searxng.example.com

Usage

What did Go 1.26 change about the garbage collector?

The agent searches, reads the snippets, and calls fetch_url on whichever result looks worth opening.

Inside Docker

Running Mycel itself with docker compose puts it on the same network as SearXNG, where localhost means the container. Use SEARXNG_URL=http://searxng:8080 there.

The model needs tool support

Tool calling depends on the model. If LLM_MODEL has no tools capability, Mycel warns at startup and web_search is ignored along with the rest.