openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix 2026.5.2 web_search cannot use Brave after plugin externalization; DuckDuckGo challenges immediately [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

After moving OpenClaw 2026.5.2 web search from DuckDuckGo back to Brave, the first-class web_search tool still fails even though Brave API works directly, the Brave plugin is installed/loaded, and config validates as provider: "brave".

There appear to be two separate issues:

1. DuckDuckGo key-free search immediately returns bot-detection challenges in normal web_search use.
2. After installing/enabling the externalized Brave plugin, the agent web_search tool reports web_search is disabled or no provider is available despite openclaw plugins inspect brave showing web-search: brave and config showing tools.web.search.provider = brave.

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.5.2 (8b2a6e5)
• OS: macOS 26.4.1 arm64
• Node: 25.8.1
• Gateway: LaunchAgent, local loopback

DuckDuckGo repro

Config:

{
  "tools": { "web": { "search": { "enabled": true, "provider": "duckduckgo", "maxResults": 5, "timeoutSeconds": 15 } } },
  "plugins": { "entries": { "duckduckgo": { "enabled": true } } }
}

Tool call:

web_search(query="Toronto weather today", count=3)

Observed:

DuckDuckGo returned a bot-detection challenge.

Bursting several searches in the same second produced the same challenge error for every call, not a normal 429.

Direct local fetch of https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=...&kp=-1 with a browser User-Agent returned HTML with result__a, so this may be specific to the guarded fetch / plugin path.

Brave repro

Brave was externalized in 5.2, so initially setting:

"tools.web.search.provider": "brave"

failed gateway config validation:

tools.web.search.provider: web_search provider is not available: brave (install or enable plugin "brave", then run openclaw doctor --fix)
Config auto-restored from last-known-good

Then installed Brave:

openclaw plugins install @openclaw/brave-plugin
openclaw doctor --fix
# doctor output: Plugin registry refreshed: 9/95 enabled plugins indexed.
# restart gateway

Validated state:

openclaw config get tools.web.search
{
  "enabled": true,
  "provider": "brave",
  "maxResults": 5,
  "timeoutSeconds": 15
}

openclaw plugins inspect brave
Status: loaded
Version: 2026.5.2
Capabilities:
web-search: brave

Direct Brave API with the same restored key succeeds:

brave_direct_ok status 200 results 3

But the first-class agent tool still fails in both current and fresh isolated runs:

web_search is disabled or no provider is available.

Expected

Once @openclaw/brave-plugin is installed, loaded, registry-refreshed, and selected via tools.web.search.provider = "brave", the first-class web_search tool should use Brave.

Impact

Timely queries routed through OpenClaw currently cannot use either configured provider:

• DuckDuckGo is challenged immediately.
• Brave is loaded/configured but not exposed to the agent web_search tool registry.