#Ollama Subagent Issue: 'google/' Prefix on local models with sessions_spawn

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cold dawn
#

Hello OpenClaw Community & Devs,

I'm encountering a persistent issue when trying to use local Ollama models for subagents with sessions_spawn.

Setup:

  • OpenClaw Agent is running on a Hetzner server.
  • Ollama (v0.17.7) is locally installed with llama3.2:1b models.
  • OpenClaw is configured for the Google provider (google/gemini-2.5-flash) as default.
  • Ollama endpoint and a dummy API key were configured via openclaw config set providers.ollama.endpoint "http://127.0.0.1:11434" and openclaw config set providers.ollama.apiKey "ollama".

Problem:
Every attempt to spawn a subagent using sessions_spawn(model='llama3.2:1b', provider='ollama', ...) results in the error:
FailoverError: Unknown model: google/llama3.2:1b

It appears OpenClaw is automatically prefixing "google/" to the Ollama model name, even when provider='ollama' is explicitly specified.

Attempts so far:

  1. Direct specification of the model name llama3.2:1b.
  2. Explicitly setting provider='ollama' in the sessions_spawn call (current attempt).
  3. Passing OLLAMA_HOST and OLLAMA_API_KEY as env parameters to sessions_spawn.

All attempts yield the same "google/" prefix error.

Question for the Community/Devs:
Is there a specific configuration, environment variable, or different syntax to correctly instruct OpenClaw to use a local Ollama model for a sessions_spawn call without the "google/" prefix being added? Or is this an architectural limitation/bug in OpenClaw?

Any help or workarounds would be greatly appreciated, as this is blocking our ability to run worker bots locally and save on API limits.

Thank you!