openclaw onboard

Interactive onboarding for local or remote Gateway setup.

Related guides

Examples

openclaw onboard
openclaw onboard --modern
openclaw onboard --flow quickstart
openclaw onboard --flow manual
openclaw onboard --flow import
openclaw onboard --import-from hermes --import-source ~/.hermes
openclaw onboard --skip-bootstrap
openclaw onboard --mode remote --remote-url wss://gateway-host:18789

--flow import uses plugin-owned migration providers such as Hermes. It only runs against a fresh OpenClaw setup; if existing config, credentials, sessions, or workspace memory/identity files are present, reset or choose a fresh setup before importing.

--modern starts the Crestodian conversational onboarding preview. Without --modern, openclaw onboard keeps the classic onboarding flow.

For plaintext private-network ws:// targets (trusted networks only), set OPENCLAW_ALLOW_INSECURE_PRIVATE_WS=1 in the onboarding process environment. There is no openclaw.json equivalent for this client-side transport break-glass.

Non-interactive custom provider:

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --auth-choice custom-api-key \
  --custom-base-url "https://llm.example.com/v1" \
  --custom-model-id "foo-large" \
  --custom-api-key "$CUSTOM_API_KEY" \
  --secret-input-mode plaintext \
  --custom-compatibility openai \
  --custom-image-input

--custom-api-key is optional in non-interactive mode. If omitted, onboarding checks CUSTOM_API_KEY. OpenClaw marks common vision model IDs as image-capable automatically. Pass --custom-image-input for unknown custom vision IDs, or --custom-text-input to force text-only metadata.

LM Studio also supports a provider-specific key flag in non-interactive mode:

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --auth-choice lmstudio \
  --custom-base-url "http://localhost:1234/v1" \
  --custom-model-id "qwen/qwen3.5-9b" \
  --lmstudio-api-key "$LM_API_TOKEN" \
  --accept-risk

Non-interactive Ollama:

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --auth-choice ollama \
  --custom-base-url "http://ollama-host:11434" \
  --custom-model-id "qwen3.5:27b" \
  --accept-risk

--custom-base-url defaults to http://127.0.0.1:11434. --custom-model-id is optional; if omitted, onboarding uses Ollama's suggested defaults. Cloud model IDs such as kimi-k2.5:cloud also work here.

Store provider keys as refs instead of plaintext:

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --auth-choice openai-api-key \
  --secret-input-mode ref \
  --accept-risk

With --secret-input-mode ref, onboarding writes env-backed refs instead of plaintext key values. For auth-profile backed providers this writes keyRef entries; for custom providers this writes models.providers.<id>.apiKey as an env ref (for example { source: "env", provider: "default", id: "CUSTOM_API_KEY" }).

Non-interactive ref mode contract:

• Set the provider env var in the onboarding process environment (for example OPENAI_API_KEY).
• Do not pass inline key flags (for example --openai-api-key) unless that env var is also set.
• If an inline key flag is passed without the required env var, onboarding fails fast with guidance.

Gateway token options in non-interactive mode:

• --gateway-auth token --gateway-token <token> stores a plaintext token.
• --gateway-auth token --gateway-token-ref-env <name> stores gateway.auth.token as an env SecretRef.
• --gateway-token and --gateway-token-ref-env are mutually exclusive.
• --gateway-token-ref-env requires a non-empty env var in the onboarding process environment.
• With --install-daemon, when token auth requires a token, SecretRef-managed gateway tokens are validated but not persisted as resolved plaintext in supervisor service environment metadata.
• With --install-daemon, if token mode requires a token and the configured token SecretRef is unresolved, onboarding fails closed with remediation guidance.
• With --install-daemon, if both gateway.auth.token and gateway.auth.password are configured and gateway.auth.mode is unset, onboarding blocks install until mode is set explicitly.
• Local onboarding writes gateway.mode="local" into the config. If a later config file is missing gateway.mode, treat that as config damage or an incomplete manual edit, not as a valid local-mode shortcut.
• Local onboarding installs selected downloadable plugins when the chosen setup path requires them.
• Remote onboarding only writes connection info for the remote Gateway and does not install local plugin packages.
• --allow-unconfigured is a separate gateway runtime escape hatch. It does not mean onboarding may omit gateway.mode.

Example:

export OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN="your-token"
openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --mode local \
  --auth-choice skip \
  --gateway-auth token \
  --gateway-token-ref-env OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN \
  --accept-risk

Non-interactive local gateway health:

• Unless you pass --skip-health, onboarding waits for a reachable local gateway before it exits successfully.
• --install-daemon starts the managed gateway install path first. Without it, you must already have a local gateway running, for example openclaw gateway run.
• If you only want config/workspace/bootstrap writes in automation, use --skip-health.
• If you manage workspace files yourself, pass --skip-bootstrap to set agents.defaults.skipBootstrap: true and skip creating AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, TOOLS.md, IDENTITY.md, USER.md, HEARTBEAT.md, and BOOTSTRAP.md.
• On native Windows, --install-daemon tries Scheduled Tasks first and falls back to a per-user Startup-folder login item if task creation is denied.

Interactive onboarding behavior with reference mode:

• Choose Use secret reference when prompted.
• Then choose either:
  • Environment variable
  • Configured secret provider (file or exec)
• Onboarding performs a fast preflight validation before saving the ref.
  • If validation fails, onboarding shows the error and lets you retry.

Non-interactive Z.AI endpoint choices

# Promptless endpoint selection
openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --auth-choice zai-coding-global \
  --zai-api-key "$ZAI_API_KEY"

# Other Z.AI endpoint choices:
# --auth-choice zai-coding-cn
# --auth-choice zai-global
# --auth-choice zai-cn

Non-interactive Mistral example:

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --auth-choice mistral-api-key \
  --mistral-api-key "$MISTRAL_API_KEY"

Flow notes

If the preferred-provider filter yields no loaded models yet, onboarding falls back to the unfiltered catalog instead of leaving the picker empty.

- **Grok** can offer optional `x_search` setup with the same `XAI_API_KEY` and an `x_search` model choice.
- **Kimi** can ask for the Moonshot API region (`api.moonshot.ai` vs `api.moonshot.cn`) and the default Kimi web-search model.

Common follow-up commands

openclaw configure
openclaw agents add <name>