diff --git a/src/tools/WebSearchTool/providers/duckduckgo.ts b/src/tools/WebSearchTool/providers/duckduckgo.ts
index 73dafd6b..a21dbe5f 100644
--- a/src/tools/WebSearchTool/providers/duckduckgo.ts
+++ b/src/tools/WebSearchTool/providers/duckduckgo.ts
@@ -1,6 +1,23 @@
 import type { SearchInput, SearchProvider } from './types.js'
 import { applyDomainFilters, type ProviderOutput } from './types.js'
 
+// DuckDuckGo's HTML scraper aggressively blocks datacenter / repeat IPs with
+// an "anomaly in the request" response. When that happens we surface an
+// actionable error instead of the opaque scraper message so users know how
+// to configure a working backend.
+const DDG_ANOMALY_HINT =
+  'DuckDuckGo scraping is rate-limited from this network. ' +
+  'Configure a search backend with one of: ' +
+  'FIRECRAWL_API_KEY, TAVILY_API_KEY, EXA_API_KEY, YOU_API_KEY, ' +
+  'JINA_API_KEY, BING_API_KEY, MOJEEK_API_KEY, LINKUP_API_KEY — ' +
+  'or use an Anthropic / Vertex / Foundry provider for native web search.'
+
+function isAnomalyError(message: string): boolean {
+  return /anomaly in the request|likely making requests too quickly/i.test(
+    message,
+  )
+}
+
 export const duckduckgoProvider: SearchProvider = {
   name: 'duckduckgo',
 
@@ -20,7 +37,16 @@ export const duckduckgoProvider: SearchProvider = {
     }
     if (signal?.aborted) throw new DOMException('Aborted', 'AbortError')
     // TODO: duck-duck-scrape doesn't accept AbortSignal — can't cancel in-flight searches
-    const response = await search(input.query, { safeSearch: SafeSearchType.STRICT })
+    let response: Awaited<ReturnType<typeof search>>
+    try {
+      response = await search(input.query, { safeSearch: SafeSearchType.STRICT })
+    } catch (err) {
+      const msg = err instanceof Error ? err.message : String(err)
+      if (isAnomalyError(msg)) {
+        throw new Error(DDG_ANOMALY_HINT)
+      }
+      throw err
+    }
 
     const hits = applyDomainFilters(
       response.results.map(r => ({