In the plugin-based ecosystem of DeepSeek Harness (DSH), web search is one of the foundational capabilities of an agent. Most off-the-shelf search tools require applying for API keys or rely on a single search engine. Once they encounter anti-scraping measures or rate limits, the search pipeline breaks down. The dsh-web-search-public plugin provides a solution that does not require any credentials.

Plugin Positioning

This plugin is maintained by hy-sde and belongs to the “Web Tools” category in DSH. Its core function is to distribute a user’s query in parallel across five public search engines (Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Google, and Mojeek), and then merge the results through a cross-engine consensus mechanism. This prevents a single engine from compromising the entire search request due to bot challenges, timeouts, or empty pages.

Core Capabilities

Based on verified facts, this plugin has the following capabilities:

  1. Zero API keys: It can be used without registering an account or obtaining any keys.
  2. Parallel distribution and consensus-based merging: The query is sent to all supported engines simultaneously, and results are ranked based on cross-engine consensus.
  3. Soft/hard deadline mechanisms: Soft and hard deadlines are set during concurrent search to prevent a hung engine from causing the entire search task to block indefinitely.
  4. Browser upgrade: For anti-bot walls such as Cloudflare and ALTCHA, the plugin supports automatically upgrading to browser requests for access.
  5. Circuit breaking and rate limiting: A built-in circuit breaker mechanism is provided. When an engine frequently returns errors or zero results, it automatically enters a cooldown period to avoid ineffective requests.

Installation and Enablement

Installing this plugin requires the DSH CLI. Ensure that your environment has Node.js 22.19 or later and the standard DeepSeek Harness dsh CLI installed.

Run the following command to add the plugin to the web configuration file:

dsh plugin --profile web add @hy-sde-org/dsh-web-search-public

After installation, you can verify that the configuration is effective with the following command:

dsh web --dump-config

In the output configuration tree, you should be able to find web.config.searchProvider: public and the web-search-public plugin entry.

Usage

After enabling the plugin, run the DSH web interactive mode directly:

dsh web

In the conversation, simply instruct the agent to perform a search. For example:

web_search [your query]

The plugin will automatically run parallel search and return the merged results.

Notes

  • Version check: Some newer versions of DeepSeek Harness already include dsh-web-search-public as part of the base package. If your environment is already on a newer version, do not install it again; otherwise, startup may fail due to duplicate loader entry IDs.
  • Source-code review: Although the plugin is based on the MIT License, we recommend reviewing the source code before using it in production to ensure it complies with your security policy.

This plugin is part of the DSH plugin ecosystem and aims to lower the barrier to entry for web search while improving the reliability of search results through concurrency and consensus mechanisms. You can view the source code or submit issues on GitHub.