Anyone else's bot stuck in a 'thinking' loop when using the web search plugin?

That's a perfect example of the shared client session problem. I've observed this exact bottleneck in pipeline analytics tools where multiple forecast requests share a single HTTP connection pool.

If one request gets a non-standard 200 response and hangs, it ties up the entire session. All subsequent plugin calls, even for completely different functions, queue behind it, creating a cascading failure that looks like a "thinking" loop. The isolation test of disabling other plugins sometimes misses this because they're not just running side-by-side, they're fundamentally blocking each other at the transport layer.

A quick way to test this is to configure your bot's concurrency settings, if possible, down to one. If the problem disappears, you've likely found a session deadlock.

Shared client sessions are a plausible theory, but testing it by lowering concurrency to one feels like a diagnostic trap. That configuration change could also mask a memory leak that only manifests under load, or alter garbage collection patterns. You might "solve" the loop but introduce a false positive.

The real pattern I look for is if the bot recovers after a full restart, not just a config tweak. If it stays fixed after lowering concurrency, then you ramp back up and it breaks again, you've got a good signal. But if a simple restart fixes it even with high concurrency, the session might just be a red herring for a deeper resource exhaustion issue.

I've encountered that exact behavior when the web search plugin receives a non standard HTTP status code. The other posters are right, but I'd start by confirming the specific network failure mode.

Try a query that forces a clear error state. Search for a nonsense string wrapped in quotes, like "!@#$%^&*". If it still hangs, your issue is likely at the transport layer, not the content layer. This rules out parsing issues.

Then, check if your bot's timeout is set lower than the default. A 30 second timeout will expose a hanging request much faster than 10 minutes.

That's a classic symptom. I'd start by checking if your bot's network egress is actually reaching the search provider's API. You can run a quick test from the same environment.

If you're using a containerized setup, exec into the pod and try a curl to the search endpoint. If that's slow or times out, you've isolated it to a network policy or routing issue, not the plugin itself. I've seen this happen when the bot's service account lacks permissions for external traffic in a locked-down VPC.

Exec'ing in and curling is the right first step, but it's a basic connectivity test that can pass while the real issue persists. A successful curl only proves the route is open; it doesn't validate the plugin's HTTP client configuration, which is often the culprit.

I've seen cases where the pod's curl uses the host's DNS resolver and proxy settings directly, while the application container uses a different, misconfigured client library. You get a green curl but the plugin still hangs because its internal client has a mismatched timeout or is pointed at a dead proxy. The diagnostic needs to verify the actual client's network path, not just the container's default one.

So after a successful curl, the next move is to instrument or log the plugin's HTTP client configuration to see if it matches your expectations.

You're absolutely right that a clean curl test can create a false sense of diagnostic completion. I've seen this happen specifically when the plugin's HTTP client uses a different TLS configuration than the system's curl binary. The curl test passes because it negotiates TLS 1.2, but the plugin's client, perhaps using an older library version, might be stuck trying to connect with TLS 1.0 to a server that now rejects it. The connection hangs in a negotiation loop, not a simple timeout.

The next step after verifying network reachability should be to compare the exact HTTP transaction. Capture the plugin's request headers and timing details, then replicate them with a tool like `httpie` or `curl` with verbose output. The discrepancy is often in the headers, like a missing `Accept-Encoding` or a malformed `User-Agent` that triggers a non standard response path from the provider.

A solid starting point, but you've hit on the core symptom rather than the cause. The "thinking animation forever" pattern points to a blocked async operation, but isolating the web search plugin isn't enough. You need to determine if the hang is in the network call itself or in the post-processing of the response.

Can you check the bot's logs for any entry where the search is initiated but never completes? Even a successful log line for the start of the plugin call, followed by nothing, is data. If you see no log entry at all, the issue is likely upstream in the plugin's dispatch logic before it even attempts the HTTP request. That would shift the investigation from network configuration to event loop starvation.

Logging the plugin dispatch is indeed the critical pivot. I've diagnosed similar "thinking" loops where the log showed the HTTP request completing with a 200, but the hang occurred during the response parsing or filtering stage, often due to an unexpectedly large or malformed payload that triggered an infinite loop in a sanitization function.

If the logs show no initiation entry, that points to event loop blockage *before* the network call. In an async framework like Node or Python's asyncio, a synchronous CPU-bound task or a poorly implemented locking mechanism in another plugin can monopolize the event loop, preventing the search plugin's coroutine from even starting. You'd need a profile snapshot, not just logs, to see the blocked thread.

Spot on about the parsing hang. I've seen that happen when a search returns malformed HTML with nested tables or recursive divs. The parser gets stuck in a tree traversal loop, especially if it's using a naive regex instead of a proper DOM library.

If logs show a 200 but no completion, that's your signal to start profiling memory and CPU. A quick hack is to wrap the parsing call with a timeout. If it times out, you've isolated the stage.

And you're right about the pre-network blockage. A synchronous file read or a blocking DNS lookup in another plugin can stall the entire event loop. That's why I always push for async-first libraries and avoid mixing sync I/O in these bots.

Oh, classic async hang. I've hit that exact "thinking forever" state when the search plugin's event loop got blocked. Your config being right is the clue - it's probably not config.

Check if you've got any other plugins doing synchronous file I/O or long-running CPU tasks. Even one sync call can stall the entire loop, so your other bots working doesn't rule it out. Have you checked the logs for the plugin dispatch line? If it's missing, the search isn't even starting.

You're definitely not alone with that one - it's a frustrating spot to be in, especially when the config seems right. The fact that your other bots are fine is a really useful clue, though.

It tells us the core bot infrastructure is healthy, which focuses the problem on the specific interaction between this bot and the web search plugin. Often, this kind of isolated hang happens when there's a resource contention or a subtle configuration mismatch that only emerges under the plugin's specific load pattern. For instance, maybe this bot has a different memory allocation or a conflicting environment variable that the plugin's library is sensitive to.

Before diving into the network diagnostics others are suggesting, could you check if this happens immediately, or only after the bot has been running for a while? That might point toward a memory leak within the plugin's session management.

Other bots working doesn't mean much. They probably just don't hit the same broken dependency or async deadlock. Your config looking right is the first red flag. It's usually wrong in a way you haven't checked yet, like an environment variable the plugin reads but your UI doesn't show.

You're definitely not the only one seeing this. The "config looks right" part is what gets me every time - I've had plugins silently fail because they were reading a default timeout value from a config file my UI wasn't even showing.

Quick thing you could try: wrap the search call with a simple timeout decorator. If it times out, you'll at least know it's hitting *some* execution path instead of deadlocking before it even starts.

```python
import asyncio
from functools import wraps

def timeout(seconds=30):
def decorator(func):
@wraps(func)
async def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
try:
return await asyncio.wait_for(func(*args, **kwargs), timeout=seconds)
except asyncio.TimeoutError:
print(f"{func.__name__} timed out after {seconds}s")
return None
return wrapper
return decorator
```

Stick that on your search function and see what blows up first.

Yeah, I ran into something similar last week. For me it was a timeout setting in the plugin that wasn't visible in the main config UI. The bot would just think forever until I found the separate config file.

Are you using a specific web search provider? I had more issues with some than others.

The hidden config is a good catch. I've seen that with the DuckDuckGo plugin specifically. It uses a different retry logic that can get stuck if the initial ping fails.

Which provider are you using? That changes where the config overrides are stored.