stanford-oval/storm · critical · RuntimeError

You must supply brave_search_api_key or set environment vari

Error message

You must supply brave_search_api_key or set environment variable BRAVE_API_KEY

What it means

BraveRM.__init__ raises this when no Brave Search API key is available. The retriever requires a key either passed explicitly or present in the BRAVE_API_KEY environment variable; without one it cannot authenticate to Brave's Search API.

Source

Thrown at knowledge_storm/rm.py:576

                                knowledge_graph.get("description")
                                if knowledge_graph is not None
                                else ""
                            ),
                        }
                    )
            except:
                continue

        return collected_results


class BraveRM(dspy.Retrieve):
    def __init__(
        self, brave_search_api_key=None, k=3, is_valid_source: Callable = None
    ):
        super().__init__(k=k)
        if not brave_search_api_key and not os.environ.get("BRAVE_API_KEY"):
            raise RuntimeError(
                "You must supply brave_search_api_key or set environment variable BRAVE_API_KEY"
            )
        elif brave_search_api_key:
            self.brave_search_api_key = brave_search_api_key
        else:
            self.brave_search_api_key = os.environ["BRAVE_API_KEY"]
        self.usage = 0

        # If not None, is_valid_source shall be a function that takes a URL and returns a boolean.
        if is_valid_source:
            self.is_valid_source = is_valid_source
        else:
            self.is_valid_source = lambda x: True

    def get_usage_and_reset(self):
        usage = self.usage
        self.usage = 0

View on GitHub (pinned to fb951af774)

Solutions

1. Export BRAVE_API_KEY in your shell or .env: export BRAVE_API_KEY=your_key
2. Pass the key explicitly: BraveRM(brave_search_api_key='your_key')
3. Verify with: python -c "import os; print(bool(os.environ.get('BRAVE_API_KEY')))"
4. If using dotenv, ensure load_dotenv() runs before constructing BraveRM

Example fix

# before
rm = BraveRM(k=3)

# after
rm = BraveRM(brave_search_api_key='your_key', k=3)
# or: os.environ['BRAVE_API_KEY'] = 'your_key' before construction

import os
assert os.environ.get("BRAVE_API_KEY") or BRAVE_KEY_FROM_CONFIG, "BRAVE_API_KEY not set; get one at https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com"

try:
    rm = BraveRM(k=3)
except RuntimeError as e:
    if 'BRAVE_API_KEY' in str(e):
        raise SystemExit('Configure BRAVE_API_KEY before running')
    raise

When it happens

Trigger: Instantiating BraveRM() with no brave_search_api_key argument while BRAVE_API_KEY is unset or empty in the environment.

Common situations: New developer forgets to copy .env to the deployment environment, CI/CD pipeline lacks the secret, docker container built without the env var, or a typo in the variable name (e.g. BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY).

Understand the failure class

Background: "environment variable is not set" and "Missing keys in environment" errors: what missing required env var messages mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

• You must supply searxng_api_url
• You must supply azure_ai_search_api_key or set environment v
• No valid OpenAI API provider is provided. Cannot use default
• Please provide an embedding model.
• Qdrant client is not initialized.

AI-assisted analysis of stanford-oval/storm@fb951af774 (2026-08-28). Data as JSON: /api/errors/04a4863dcc244a0f. Report an issue: GitHub.