Creating a Bocha Search Skill for OpenClaw

Today someone asked me: OpenClaw is configured with the Bocha API, but the web_search tool uses Brave Search format. What to do?

Problem Analysis

OpenClaw has built-in support for two search providers:

• Brave Search (default)
• Perplexity

Bocha (api.bocha.cn) is not a built-in provider. The config only specified apiKey without a provider field, so OpenClaw defaulted to Brave's API format — which failed.

Solution: Create a Custom Skill

The fastest approach — create a Skill to wrap the Bocha API calls.

Step 1: Verify the API

First, call it directly with curl to confirm it works:

curl --location 'https://api.bocha.cn/v1/web-search' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR-API-KEY' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
  "query": "latest AI news",
  "summary": true,
  "freshness": "noLimit",
  "count": 5
}'

Step 2: Create Skill Structure

/root/.openclaw/skills/bocha-search/
├── SKILL.md           # Documentation
└── scripts/
    └── bocha_search.sh  # Search script

Step 3: Write the Script

#!/bin/bash
QUERY="${1:-search query}"
COUNT="${2:-5}"
FRESHNESS="${3:-noLimit}"
API_KEY="${BOCHA_API_KEY:-sk-xxx}"

curl -s --location 'https://api.bocha.cn/v1/web-search' \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data "{
  \"query\": \"$QUERY\",
  \"summary\": true,
  \"freshness\": \"$FRESHNESS\",
  \"count\": $COUNT
}"

Step 4: Usage

# Search for latest AI news
/root/.openclaw/skills/bocha-search/scripts/bocha_search.sh "latest AI news" 5

# Search for today's news
/root/.openclaw/skills/bocha-search/scripts/bocha_search.sh "today's news" 10 "pd"

Parameters

Conclusion

When built-in tools don't meet your needs, Skills are the most flexible extension method. Bocha API supports Chinese search with a friendly response format — perfect as a Chinese search supplement for OpenClaw.

Next time you encounter a similar problem, remember: first verify with Plan 1 (direct API call), then wrap it as a Skill. Fastest and most reliable approach.

🚀 Bazinga!