Web search: missing_brave_api_key even though it's configured

Symptoms

• web_search fails with missing_brave_api_key.
• You already ran openclaw configure --section web and the config shows an apiKey field (often redacted when printed).

Cause

The running gateway process may not be reading the same secrets source you just edited.

Common cases:

• You edited config in an interactive shell, but the gateway is running as a background service with a different environment.
• The Brave key exists in config, but the gateway/tool path is only checking the environment variable in your current version/build.

Fix

1) Put the key in ~/.openclaw/.env and restart the gateway (most reliable)

printf 'BRAVE_API_KEY=%s\n' 'YOUR_BRAVE_KEY' >> ~/.openclaw/.env
openclaw gateway restart

2) Confirm config flags are sane

openclaw config get tools.web.search.enabled
openclaw config get tools.web.search.provider

Notes:

• enabled should not be false.
• provider should be brave (or unset; brave is the default).

Verify

• Run a small search and confirm it returns results (not missing_brave_api_key).
• If it still fails, capture the tool error payload + openclaw gateway status --json (redact tokens).