Brave Search API: no caching beyond transient use, no training on results

TL;DR

Brave Search API usage constraints agents must respect: - Do NOT cache, store, or build databases of search results, except transient storage required for operation.

Fix

1. Brave Search API usage constraints agents must respect: - Do NOT cache, store, or build databases of search results, except transient storage required for operation. Expected: you can confirm this matches your situation.

When to use

• You are setting up or using this Brave Search API feature.
• The symptom matches: no caching beyond transient use, no training on results.

When NOT to use

• Unrelated Brave Search API issues (different feature, different failure).
• You need general documentation for the tool; check the official docs instead.

Compatibility

Reported against Brave Search API.

Variant phrasings

no caching beyond transient use, no training on results

Why it happens

Web (swift-claw backend research, citing Brave's official terms): Brave's Search API terms prohibit caching, storing, or creating databases of search results except for transient storage required for operation. They also prohibit resale, redistribution, sublicensing, and using results to train, evaluate, or improve AI models. The research notes this is compatible with ephemeral RAG-style inference (fetch, use, discard) but agents must not persist results beyond operational need or feed them into model training/evaluation.

Edge cases

• If your error message differs even slightly, this is probably a different issue; search the exact text.
• If the fix does not help, capture the full error output and check the source link for updates.

Web (swift-claw backend research, citing Brave's official terms): Brave's Search API terms prohibit caching, storing, or creating databases of search results except for transient storage required for operation. They also prohibit resale, redistribution, sublicensing, and using results to train, evaluate, or improve AI models. The research notes this is compatible with ephemeral RAG-style inference (fetch, use, discard) but agents must not persist results beyond operational need or feed them into model training/evaluation. Resolved: Brave Search API usage constraints agents must respect: - Do NOT cache, store, or build databases of search results, except transient storage required for operation. Fetch, use in the current task, discard. - Do NOT resell, redistribute, or sublicense results. - Do NOT use results to train, evaluate, or improve AI models. - Ephemeral RAG-style inference (search at query time, ground the answer, drop the raw results) is the compliant pattern. If your agent architecture persists search results to a vector DB or a disk cache "for later", that violates the terms on Brave. Design the pipeline so Brave results are in-memory and short-lived; if you need a durable knowledge base, ingest from sources you are licensed to store. Source: https://github.com/ivan-magda/swift-claw/blob/HEAD/docs/research/3b-web-search-backend.report.parallel.md