WeChat Search Skill

Search for WeChat Official Account (微信公众号) articles using a compliant, three-layer approach that prioritizes legal search APIs and falls back to respectful web scraping when needed.

Features

• Compliant Design: Prioritizes legal search APIs, respects robots.txt and rate limits
• Three-Layer Strategy:
  • Primary: OpenClaw web_search (Brave Search API)
  • Fallback 1: Tavily Search API (if Brave API unavailable)
  • Fallback 2: Direct web fetch from WeChat search results
• Recent Results: Returns the 5 most recent articles by default (configurable)
• Time Filtering: Support for date range and recency filters
• Multiple Output Formats: Text, JSON, and markdown formats available

Prerequisites

• OpenClaw Web Tools: Requires web_search and web_fetch tools to be available
• API Keys (optional but recommended):
  • Brave Search API Key: Set via openclaw configure --section web
  • Tavily API Key: Set as TAVILY_API_KEY environment variable

Usage

Basic Search

wechat-search "人工智能"

Advanced Options

# Return 10 results instead of default 5
wechat-search "机器学习" --max-results 10

# Search within past week
wechat-search "大模型" --past-week

# Custom date range
wechat-search "AI应用" --from 2026-01-01 --to 2026-02-01

# JSON output format
wechat-search "开源AI" --output json

# Force specific strategy
wechat-search "最新技术" --strategy tavily_only

Configuration

Create ~/.openclaw/wechat-search-config.json to customize behavior:

{
  "defaultMaxResults": 5,
  "maxResultsLimit": 20,
  "requestDelayMs": 5000,
  "cacheDurationHours": 1,
  "userAgent": "OpenClaw-WeChat-Search-Bot/1.0 (+https://github.com/your-username/wechat-search-skill)"
}

Search Strategy Details

Layer 1: OpenClaw Web Search (Brave Search)

• Uses web_search tool with site:mp.weixin.qq.com filter
• Requires Brave Search API key
• Fastest and most reliable option

Layer 2: Tavily Search API

• Uses Tavily API with site:mp.weixin.qq.com filter
• Requires TAVILY_API_KEY environment variable
• Good alternative when Brave API is unavailable

Layer 3: Direct Web Fetch

• Fetches results directly from WeChat search (sogou.com)
• Parses HTML to extract article information
• Slowest but always available as last resort

Compliance & Ethics

• Respects robots.txt: Checks and follows robots.txt directives
• Rate limiting: Minimum 5-second delay between requests
• Transparent identification: Clear User-Agent string identifying the bot
• Public content only: Only accesses publicly available articles
• No data retention: Does not store full article content, only metadata

Error Handling

• Automatic retry on network failures (up to 3 attempts)
• Graceful fallback between search strategies
• Clear error messages for debugging

Future Enhancements

• RSS feed integration support
• Article content summarization
• Author/subscription management
• Enhanced filtering options

This skill is designed to be both useful and responsible, providing access to valuable WeChat Official Account content while respecting platform rules and legal requirements.