browser-search is a free, open source data extraction & web scraping project written in JavaScript and released under MIT. It has 524 GitHub stars, 39 forks and 1 open issues, and was last pushed 16 days ago. On this registry it ranks #104 of 105 tracked projects in Data Extraction & Web Scraping, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

browser-search

Release GitHub stars GitHub issues License: MIT Node.js >=20 Discussions Follow updates

A skill for AI agents. OpenCode, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenClaw and beyond. Search the web with SearXNG, browse with Camofox, bypass protections with CloakBrowser. Anti-hallucination by design. All self-hosted, free, unlimited.

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Why it exists

Today an AI agent browsing the web is like a thief in a balaclava sneaking around a police academy. The site protections block it, challenge it, reject it.

👮 browser-search flips the situation: your agent stops being the thief and becomes the chief of police. No more clumsy access attempts. It walks through every door because it has the right tools. SearXNG to search, Camofox to browse, CloakBrowser when the site plays hardball.

The skill enforces the exclusive use of deterministic scripts. This eliminates model hallucinations, even with the cheapest models. The 3 tools are described in natural language, but execution is rigid: the model can neither get the command wrong nor misinterpret the output. The result is guaranteed success on every query — the skill and its deterministic scripts guide the model to scour the web until it finds the answer.

  1. SearXNG — metasearch engine for the search phase (multi-source, JSON)
  2. Camofox — browser navigable via REST API for standard sites
  3. CloakBrowser — stealth browser for anti-bot protected sites

The typical flow: the agent first searches with SearXNG, then browses the results with Camofox (or CloakBrowser if the site is protected).

Benefits

  • 100% free, self-hosted, unlimited. No API keys to buy, no subscriptions, no rate limits. Everything runs on your machine, Docker and npm. Unlimited usage, zero cost.

  • Lightweight, runs anywhere. Built and tested on a Raspberry Pi — if it runs there, it runs everywhere. Minimal resource consumption, no heavy infrastructure needed, runs 24/7 on low-power hardware.

  • Search + browse in one kit. No manual integration needed. Searching and browsing are two distinct phases, both covered.

  • Automatic navigation escalation. If Camofox gets blocked by Cloudflare/Akamai, the agent automatically switches to CloakBrowser.

  • Smart performance. SearXNG for the search phase (milliseconds). Camofox and CloakBrowser are only used to browse the sites that actually need it.

  • Automatic agent choice. The AI agent decides which tool to use: SearXNG for initial search, Camofox for browsing, CloakBrowser if the site is protected. Zero human intervention.

  • Anti-hallucination by design. The skill's Deep Research mode enforces a "search first, answer second" workflow: the agent must verify every factual claim against live web sources, cross-reference multiple angles, and never guess. No more made-up answers.

  • Fully customizable. The SKILL.md is plain text. You can edit the core rules, add your own, remove what you don't need. Adapt it to your workflow, your team, your standards.

  • Native stealth. CloakBrowser automatically detects Cloudflare, Akamai, DataDome, Imperva, PerimeterX, and DDoS-Guard challenges, and waits for them to resolve before extracting content.

  • Works with any agent. The SKILL.md is written for OpenCode, but the logic is identical for any AI agent. Same README, same package.json, everything works everywhere. Just ask your agent how to convert the skill for its environment.

Why it's different

Most web tools for AI agents stop where the wall starts: when a site throws a Cloudflare or Akamai challenge, they hand back an error and the agent gives up. browser-search is built to walk through instead.

  • Search → browse → bypass in one skill. No manual integration, no per-query costs, no API keys to buy.
  • Three-tier escalation. SearXNG for milliseconds-fast search, Camofox for the ~90% of standard sites, CloakBrowser when the site plays hardball — automatically, with zero human intervention.
  • Proven anti-bot results. CloakBrowser applies 58 C++ source-level patches and scores 0.9 on reCAPTCHA v3 (human-level, server-verified), clearing Cloudflare, Turnstile, DataDome, Akamai, Imperva, PerimeterX and DDoS-Guard — where other tools just return blocked_by_challenge.
  • Free, private, self-hosted. SearXNG, Camofox and CloakBrowser all run on your machine. Zero cost, unlimited, nothing metered.

Where other tools give up, browser-search keeps going.

🏆 State of the art

These three tools were chosen because they represent the current state of the art available today. A skill like this is designed to evolve: when better tools emerge, updating the SKILL.md is all it takes to swap them in. 🔄

Star the repo and follow to stay up to date on new tools, flow improvements, and orchestration updates over time. 🚀

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    browser-search                       │
│                                                         │
│  ┌──────────────┐                                       │
│  │    Search    │                                       │
│  │              │                                       │
│  │  SearXNG     │   search engines → URLs               │
│  │  (Docker)    │   JSON results, fast                  │
│  │  :8080       │                                       │
│  └──────────────┘                                       │
│         │                                               │
│         │ results ready → to browse                     │
│         ↓                                               │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐                │
│  │           Browsing                  │                │
│  │                                     │                │
│  │  ┌──────────────┐                   │                │
│  │  │   Camofox    │  browser + REST   │                │
│  │  │  (Docker)    │  JS, click, eval  │                │
│  │  │  :9377       │                   │                │
│  │  └──────┬───────┘                   │                │
│  │         │                           │                │
│  │         │ if blocked                │                │
│  │         ↓                           │                │
│  │  ┌──────────────┐                   │                │
│  │  │ CloakBrowser │  stealth Chromium │                │
│  │  │   (npm)      │  anti-bot, proxy  │                │
│  │  └──────────────┘                   │                │
│  └─────────────────────────────────────┘                │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

How it works

Phase 1 — Search with SearXNG

Docker container on localhost:8080. Metasearch engine that queries Google, Wikipedia, Bing, DuckDuckGo and many others simultaneously. JSON output with titles, snippets, and URLs.

Example:

node scripts/searxng/searxng.mjs search "largest llm benchmark 2026"

The agent now has a list of URLs to visit and autonomously decides whether to browse them with Camofox or CloakBrowser based on the site.

Phase 2 — Browse with Camofox

Docker container on localhost:9377. Exposes a full Firef

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is browser-search free to use?

browser-search is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does browser-search do?

A skill for AI agents: search the web with SearXNG, browse with Camofox, bypass protections with CloakBrowser. Anti-hallucination by design. Self-hosted, free,

What is browser-search written in?

browser-search is primarily written in JavaScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/Johell1NS/browser-search, and it has 524 GitHub stars.