Developer releases AgentSearch, a free self-hosted search tool for AI assistants that requires no API keys

A GitHub user (brcrusoe72) published AgentSearch, an open-source wrapper around SearXNG (a privacy-focused search engine) that lets developers run AI search queries on their own servers without paying for or exposing API keys to external services.

Unlike using OpenAI's search API or Google Search API, AgentSearch runs locally under your control—no third-party tracking, no recurring costs per search, no rate limits imposed by a vendor. This matters because AI assistants (agents—software that makes decisions and takes actions on its own) need to search the web constantly; self-hosting cuts both expense and privacy risk.

Teams building internal AI tools, startups testing LLM (language model AI) features, and privacy-conscious developers can now add web search to their chatbots or workflows without vendor lock-in or bills. Early adoption is minimal (1 point, 1 comment on Hacker News), but the project is available immediately as open-source code on GitHub.