Skip to content
OpenClaw Docs

Ollama web search

OpenClaw supports Ollama Web Search as a bundled web_search provider. It uses Ollama’s web-search API and returns structured results with titles, URLs, and snippets.

For local or self-hosted Ollama, this setup does not need an API key by default. It does require:

  • an Ollama host that is reachable from OpenClaw
  • ollama signin

For direct hosted search, set the Ollama provider base URL to https://ollama.com and provide a real OLLAMA_API_KEY.

Setup

Section titled “Setup”

  1. Start Ollama

    Make sure Ollama is installed and running.

  2. Sign in

    Run:

    Terminal window
    ollama signin

  3. Choose Ollama Web Search

    Run:

    Terminal window
    openclaw configure --section web

    Then select Ollama Web Search as the provider.

If you already use Ollama for models, Ollama Web Search reuses the same configured host.

Config

Section titled “Config”
{
  tools: {
    web: {
      search: {
        provider: "ollama",
      },
    },
  },
}

Optional Ollama host override:

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      ollama: {
        config: {
          webSearch: {
            baseUrl: "http://ollama-host:11434",
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

If you already configure Ollama as a model provider, the web-search provider can reuse that host instead:

{
  models: {
    providers: {
      ollama: {
        baseUrl: "http://ollama-host:11434",
      },
    },
  },
}

The Ollama model provider uses baseUrl as the canonical key. The web-search provider also honors baseURL on models.providers.ollama for compatibility with OpenAI SDK-style config examples.

If no explicit Ollama base URL is set, OpenClaw uses http://127.0.0.1:11434.

If your Ollama host expects bearer auth, OpenClaw reuses models.providers.ollama.apiKey (or the matching env-backed provider auth) for requests to that configured host.

Direct hosted Ollama Web Search:

{
  models: {
    providers: {
      ollama: {
        baseUrl: "https://ollama.com",
        apiKey: "OLLAMA_API_KEY",
      },
    },
  },
  tools: {
    web: {
      search: {
        provider: "ollama",
      },
    },
  },
}

Notes

Section titled “Notes”
  • No web-search-specific API key field is required for this provider.
  • If the Ollama host is auth-protected, OpenClaw reuses the normal Ollama provider API key when present.
  • If baseUrl is https://ollama.com, OpenClaw calls https://ollama.com/api/web_search directly and sends the configured Ollama API key as bearer auth.
  • If the configured host does not expose web search and OLLAMA_API_KEY is set, OpenClaw can fall back to https://ollama.com/api/web_search without sending that env key to the local host.
  • OpenClaw warns during setup if Ollama is unreachable or not signed in, but it does not block selection.
  • OpenClaw does not auto-select Ollama Web Search when no higher-priority credentialed provider is configured; choose it explicitly with tools.web.search.provider: "ollama".
  • Local Ollama daemon hosts use the local proxy endpoint /api/experimental/web_search, which signs and forwards to Ollama Cloud.
  • https://ollama.com hosts use the public hosted endpoint /api/web_search directly with bearer API-key auth.
Section titled “Related”