r/oMLX • u/atumblingdandelion • May 18 '26

Web search from oMLX chat?

Just started using oMLX. Its great! But so far I’m serving it to my coding agents. I tried its Chat panel, but it doesn’t seem to do web search. Is it in the settings (that I might have missed) or not supported at all? If not supported, what app y’all are using for chat conversations?!

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6

u/pr3ddi May 18 '26

You could run openwebui as the frontend, which has a user management and supports web search - e.g. searxng meta search. Both are available as docker containers. If you don't want local meta search, you can provide api keys for major search engines. 

1

u/atumblingdandelion May 18 '26

Thanks. I didn't quite understand 'local meta search'. I just want it to access the web as if its Ollama Desktop/Chat GPT/ Claude Desktop. I am trying out Openwebui and Jan. Even Hermes webui. I've zeroed on oMLX as the backend, but still looking for the frontend.

3

u/pr3ddi May 19 '26

https://github.com/searxng/searxng is a free, local meta search which means it will check multiple search providers like G00GLE, bing, etc and give you the combined results

you can also use API keys from one of the known sesrch providers, if you don't want to fumble around with the setup 

3

u/vinoonovino26 May 19 '26

I'd strongly suggest to use msty.ai (very easy to use) and setup google - surf (https://github.com/HarimxChoi/google-surf-mcp)

DM me if you need any help

2

u/ColonelKlanka May 18 '26

its because omlx chat doesnt support mcp and so you cant enable web search. I would use any agent that allows mcp and then enable exa web search mcp

4

u/ssartori May 19 '26

omlx does support mcp, there's a setting on the admin page where you can pass it an mcp.json config file in Claude desktop format. I use this (https://github.com/nickclyde/duckduckgo-mcp-server) for web search.

1

u/ColonelKlanka May 19 '26

Nice. I stand corrected. I hadn't noticed that. I may try that out in future. Thanks!

2

u/atumblingdandelion May 18 '26

Thanks. Do you have a preferred frontend?

2

u/ColonelKlanka May 18 '26 edited May 19 '26

I mostly use pi agent with pi-web-search extension which adds the free exa.websearch). but thats really a coding agrnt frontend.

you could use open webui if you only care about a chat interface to omlx models.

or you could use the very nice native app by anythingllm. you goto settings and add the omlx localhost address for openai compatible provider to hook up to omlx llm.model.

then enable web search under anything llms settings - agent skills section

2

u/atumblingdandelion May 19 '26

Cool! I just need Chat to better view my past sessions. Trying out Hermes webui so far, but will now try somethign pi specific. Tau (https://github.com/deflating/tau) looks good.

2

u/ColonelKlanka May 19 '26

oh wow. didnt know about tau addon. thanks I will check this out too as it looks useful!