Issue Summary:
In Google AI Studio using Gemini 3.8 Flash, generation finishes with only a collapsed Thoughts panel and no answer text or error message. This happens consistently when the prompt explicitly asks to search online while the Google Search tool is disabled.
Reproduction rate:
5 out of 5 attempts reproduced the issue.
Steps to reproduce:
- Open Google AI Studio prompts/chat with Gemini 3.8 Flash.
- Keep Google Search disabled in the tool settings.
- Send this prompt: Search online for recent rankings of large model capabilities.
- Wait for generation to finish. Only the Thoughts box appears; the answer area is completely blank.
Comparison:
Running the exact same prompt with Google Search toggled ON produces a normal, visible response with citations.
Expected behavior:
If search capability is turned off, the model should explain that it cannot browse the web or answer using internal knowledge, rather than silently completing with empty text.
Attachments:
Image 1: Blank response showing only the Thoughts panel.
Image 2: Comparison run with Google Search enabled showing the full answer.
