From 53a8f474ee16f60441e9f5d8c4c9356fe11216a5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Vignesh Natarajan <vigneshnatarajan92@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:41:48 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Memory/QMD: handle fallback init failures gracefully

---
 CHANGELOG.md                      |  1 +
 src/memory/search-manager.test.ts | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
 src/memory/search-manager.ts      | 13 ++++++++++---
 3 files changed, 29 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 5f168e810..a215c25dc 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -49,6 +49,7 @@ Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai
 - Memory/QMD: make QMD result JSON parsing resilient to noisy command output by extracting the first JSON array from noisy `stdout`.
 - Memory/QMD: treat prefixed `no results found` marker output as an empty result set in qmd JSON parsing. (#11302) Thanks @blazerui.
 - Memory/QMD: make `memory status` read-only by skipping QMD boot update/embed side effects for status-only manager checks.
+- Memory/QMD: keep original QMD failures when builtin fallback initialization fails (for example missing embedding API keys), instead of replacing them with fallback init errors.
 - Memory/QMD: pass result limits to `search`/`vsearch` commands so QMD can cap results earlier.
 - Memory/QMD: avoid reading full markdown files when a `from/lines` window is requested in QMD reads.
 - Memory/QMD: skip rewriting unchanged session export markdown files during sync to reduce disk churn.
diff --git a/src/memory/search-manager.test.ts b/src/memory/search-manager.test.ts
index 359133638..fd51bb35a 100644
--- a/src/memory/search-manager.test.ts
+++ b/src/memory/search-manager.test.ts
@@ -209,4 +209,22 @@ describe("getMemorySearchManager caching", () => {
     expect(results[0]?.path).toBe("MEMORY.md");
     expect(fallbackSearch).toHaveBeenCalledTimes(1);
   });
+
+  it("keeps original qmd error when fallback manager initialization fails", async () => {
+    const retryAgentId = "retry-agent-no-fallback-auth";
+    const cfg = {
+      memory: { backend: "qmd", qmd: {} },
+      agents: { list: [{ id: retryAgentId, default: true, workspace: "/tmp/workspace" }] },
+    } as const;
+
+    mockPrimary.search.mockRejectedValueOnce(new Error("qmd query failed"));
+    mockMemoryIndexGet.mockRejectedValueOnce(new Error("No API key found for provider openai"));
+
+    const first = await getMemorySearchManager({ cfg, agentId: retryAgentId });
+    if (!first.manager) {
+      throw new Error("manager missing");
+    }
+
+    await expect(first.manager.search("hello")).rejects.toThrow("qmd query failed");
+  });
 });
diff --git a/src/memory/search-manager.ts b/src/memory/search-manager.ts
index 5978753e4..9b8278e2d 100644
--- a/src/memory/search-manager.ts
+++ b/src/memory/search-manager.ts
@@ -191,9 +191,16 @@ class FallbackMemoryManager implements MemorySearchManager {
     if (this.fallback) {
       return this.fallback;
     }
-    const fallback = await this.deps.fallbackFactory();
-    if (!fallback) {
-      log.warn("memory fallback requested but builtin index is unavailable");
+    let fallback: MemorySearchManager | null;
+    try {
+      fallback = await this.deps.fallbackFactory();
+      if (!fallback) {
+        log.warn("memory fallback requested but builtin index is unavailable");
+        return null;
+      }
+    } catch (err) {
+      const message = err instanceof Error ? err.message : String(err);
+      log.warn(`memory fallback unavailable: ${message}`);
       return null;
     }
     this.fallback = fallback;