command reference

Command Reference

This page lists every command‑line argument available in Atdork v1.1.
Arguments can be combined freely; only -q (or --batch-file) is required in non‑interactive mode.

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Main Options

Flag	Description	Default
--interactive	Launch interactive mode (step‑by‑step prompts).	(off)
-q, --query	Search query / dork string.	(required in CLI)
-r, --max-results	Maximum number of results (1–100).	20

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Search Parameters

Flag	Description	Default
--region	Region / language code (e.g. us-en, uk-en, ru-ru).	us-en
--safesearch	SafeSearch level: on, moderate, off.	moderate
--timelimit	Time limit for results: d (day), w (week), m (month), y (year).	(none)
--backend	Backend search engine(s) – comma‑separated list (see Supported Backends).	auto

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Request Tuning

Flag	Description	Default
--user-agent	Custom User‑Agent string. If not set, a random one from the built‑in pool is used.	(auto‑rotate)
--timeout	HTTP request timeout in seconds.	10
--retries	Number of retry attempts when a search fails.	2
--delay	Delay between requests in seconds (applied per query, even in multi‑threaded mode).	0

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Proxy Options

Flag	Description	Default
--proxy	One or more proxy URLs, separated by commas (e.g. http://proxy:8080,socks5://127.0.0.1:1080).
--proxy-file	Path to a file containing proxy URLs, one per line.
--tor	Automatically add Tor SOCKS5 proxy (socks5h://127.0.0.1:9050) if Tor is running.	(off)
--strict	If set, Atdork will never fall back to a direct connection when all proxies fail – it will exit with an error.	False
--proxy-cooldown	Number of seconds a proxy is marked as “banned” after a failure.	60
--max-failures	Number of consecutive failures after which a proxy is permanently removed from the pool. Set to 0 to keep all proxies forever.	3

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Multi‑Threading

Flag	Description	Default
--concurrency	Number of parallel threads to use for batch processing. Use 1 for sequential (default).	1
--max-fallback-failures	When running in parallel, if this many consecutive search failures occur, the tool automatically switches to safe sequential mode for the remaining queries.	3

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Batch Processing

Flag	Description	Default
--batch-file	Path to a file containing one query per line (empty lines and lines starting with # are ignored).
--batch-separator	When -q is used, this separator is used to split multiple queries (e.g. "dork1;dork2;dork3").	;

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Output Options

Flag	Description	Default
-o, --output	Save results to this file. The format is inferred from the extension, or use --format.
--output-dir	Save each query’s result as a separate file inside this folder (file names are generated automatically from the query text).
--format	Output format: txt, json, csv. Overrides the extension of -o.	txt
--no-snippet	Do not display the snippet/body in the terminal output (URL and title only).	(off)

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Output Validation

Flag	Description	Default
--no-validate	Disable all result filtering – keep spam, invalid URLs, and low‑quality results.	(off – filtering is on by default)
--strict-filter	Apply stricter filtering: reject results that have an empty snippet or a title shorter than 5 characters.	(off)

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Other

Flag	Description
--debug	Enable verbose debug logging (shows proxy, User‑Agent, retry details).
--version	Show version number and exit.

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Supported Backends

auto (default), bing, brave, duckduckgo, google, grokipedia, mojeek, startpage, yandex, yahoo, wikipedia.

You can combine multiple backends with a comma, e.g. --backend google,bing.

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Example Invocations

# Single search, no saving
python main.py -q "site:gov filetype:pdf" -r 20
# Interactive mode
python main.py --interactive
# Proxy + strict + Tor
python main.py -q "secret" --tor --strict --delay 1.5 -o secret.json
# Batch file with 5 threads
python main.py --batch-file dorks.txt --concurrency 5 --output-dir out --format csv
# Raw results (no filtering)
python main.py -q "buy now" --no-validate
# High quality, strict filtering
python main.py -q "financial report" --strict-filter -r 30

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Next:Examples & Use Cases for real‑world scenarios.