Lynx Web Search
Overview
Use lynx as a fast text-only fallback for web search and page retrieval.
This skill focuses on two repeatable tasks:
- Search engines from the terminal
- Fetch a URL and save a readable dump in
/tmp
When to Use
- Need quick web search from shell without GUI/browser automation
- Dedicated web tooling is unavailable
- Need plain-text output for analysis/summarization
- Need deterministic saved artifacts in
/tmp
When NOT to use:
- JavaScript-heavy pages requiring interaction/login flows
- Visual testing or DOM inspection (use browser automation tools)
Quick Reference
Engine URL templates
| Engine | URL template |
|---|---|
https://www.google.com/search?q=<query> | |
| Brave | https://search.brave.com/search?q=<query>&source=web |
| Bing | https://www.bing.com/search?q=<query> |
| Yahoo | https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=<query> |
| GitHub | https://github.com/search?q=<query>&type=repositories |
https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=<query> | |
| Reddit (less JS-heavy fallback) | https://old.reddit.com/search?q=<query> |
Core lynx flags from man lynx
-dump: render readable text and exit-source: dump raw source and exit-listonly: output links list only (good for extracting URLs)-accept_all_cookies: avoid cookie prompts-useragent=...: override UA when sites block default behavior
Implementation
1) Search any engine and save output to /tmp
engine="brave" # google|brave|bing|yahoo|github|reddit|oldreddit
query="lynx cli usage"
q=$(python - <<'PY' "$query"
import sys, urllib.parse
print(urllib.parse.quote_plus(sys.argv[1]))
PY
)
case "$engine" in
google) url="https://www.google.com/search?q=$q" ;;
brave) url="https://search.brave.com/search?q=$q&source=web" ;;
bing) url="https://www.bing.com/search?q=$q" ;;
yahoo) url="https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=$q" ;;
github) url="https://github.com/search?q=$q&type=repositories" ;;
reddit) url="https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=$q" ;;
oldreddit) url="https://old.reddit.com/search?q=$q" ;;
*) echo "Unknown engine: $engine" >&2; exit 2 ;;
esac
out="/tmp/lynx-search-${engine}-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S).txt"
lynx -accept_all_cookies -dump "$url" | tee "$out"
printf "\nSaved: %s\n" "$out"2) Fetch a given URL and save readable dump to /tmp
url="https://example.com"
out="/tmp/lynx-page-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S).txt"
lynx -accept_all_cookies -dump "$url" > "$out"
printf "Saved readable dump: %s\n" "$out"3) Optional: save raw HTML/source to /tmp
url="https://example.com"
out="/tmp/lynx-source-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S).html"
lynx -source "$url" > "$out"
printf "Saved source dump: %s\n" "$out"Common Mistakes
- Forgetting URL encoding for multi-word queries → use
urllib.parse.quote_plus - Assuming Google always works in text mode (often blocked/JS challenge)
- Using only one engine when blocked → retry with Brave/Bing/Yahoo/GitHub/old Reddit
- Not saving outputs → always write to
/tmp/lynx-*.txtfor traceability - Expecting JS-rendered content from
lynx→ use browser automation for dynamic pages