Could there be a configuration option to have gpg(1) search for PGP keys if they are not present? While there is a security risk with using keyservers, a reasonable(non-default?) setting may be using WKD to search for a key and importing it if found.
Unless I'm mistaken, if you have it configured in your system
gpgsettings with a keyserver set up, then gpg already does this
That is true. You can set the auto-locate-key option in
gpg.conf. My bad.