moltbot/docs/gateway/secrets.md

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Secrets management: SecretRef contract, runtime snapshot behavior, and safe one-way scrubbing	Configuring SecretRefs for provider credentials and `auth-profiles.json` refs Operating secrets reload, audit, configure, and apply safely in production Understanding startup fail-fast, inactive-surface filtering, and last-known-good behavior	Secrets Management

Secrets management

OpenClaw supports additive SecretRefs so supported credentials do not need to be stored as plaintext in configuration.

Plaintext still works. SecretRefs are opt-in per credential.

Goals and runtime model

Secrets are resolved into an in-memory runtime snapshot.

• Resolution is eager during activation, not lazy on request paths.
• Startup fails fast when an effectively active SecretRef cannot be resolved.
• Reload uses atomic swap: full success, or keep the last-known-good snapshot.
• Runtime requests read from the active in-memory snapshot only.

This keeps secret-provider outages off hot request paths.

Active-surface filtering

SecretRefs are validated only on effectively active surfaces.

• Enabled surfaces: unresolved refs block startup/reload.
• Inactive surfaces: unresolved refs do not block startup/reload.
• Inactive refs emit non-fatal diagnostics with code SECRETS_REF_IGNORED_INACTIVE_SURFACE.

Examples of inactive surfaces:

• Disabled channel/account entries.
• Top-level channel credentials that no enabled account inherits.
• Disabled tool/feature surfaces.
• Web search provider-specific keys that are not selected by tools.web.search.provider. In auto mode (provider unset), provider-specific keys are also active for provider auto-detection.
• gateway.remote.token / gateway.remote.password SecretRefs are active (when gateway.remote.enabled is not false) if one of these is true:
  • gateway.mode=remote
  • gateway.remote.url is configured
  • gateway.tailscale.mode is serve or funnel In local mode without those remote surfaces:
  • gateway.remote.token is active when token auth can win and no env/auth token is configured.
  • gateway.remote.password is active only when password auth can win and no env/auth password is configured.
• gateway.auth.token SecretRef is inactive for startup auth resolution when OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN (or CLAWDBOT_GATEWAY_TOKEN) is set, because env token input wins for that runtime.

Gateway auth surface diagnostics

When a SecretRef is configured on gateway.auth.token, gateway.auth.password, gateway.remote.token, or gateway.remote.password, gateway startup/reload logs the surface state explicitly:

• active: the SecretRef is part of the effective auth surface and must resolve.
• inactive: the SecretRef is ignored for this runtime because another auth surface wins, or because remote auth is disabled/not active.

These entries are logged with SECRETS_GATEWAY_AUTH_SURFACE and include the reason used by the active-surface policy, so you can see why a credential was treated as active or inactive.

Onboarding reference preflight

When onboarding runs in interactive mode and you choose SecretRef storage, OpenClaw runs preflight validation before saving:

• Env refs: validates env var name and confirms a non-empty value is visible during onboarding.
• Provider refs (file or exec): validates provider selection, resolves id, and checks resolved value type.
• Quickstart reuse path: when gateway.auth.token is already a SecretRef, onboarding resolves it before probe/dashboard bootstrap (for env, file, and exec refs) using the same fail-fast gate.

If validation fails, onboarding shows the error and lets you retry.

SecretRef contract

Use one object shape everywhere:

{ source: "env" | "file" | "exec", provider: "default", id: "..." }

source: "env"

{ source: "env", provider: "default", id: "OPENAI_API_KEY" }

Validation:

• provider must match ^[a-z][a-z0-9_-]{0,63}$
• id must match ^[A-Z][A-Z0-9_]{0,127}$

source: "file"

{ source: "file", provider: "filemain", id: "/providers/openai/apiKey" }

Validation:

• provider must match ^[a-z][a-z0-9_-]{0,63}$
• id must be an absolute JSON pointer (/...)
• RFC6901 escaping in segments: ~ => ~0, / => ~1

source: "exec"

{ source: "exec", provider: "vault", id: "providers/openai/apiKey" }

Validation:

• provider must match ^[a-z][a-z0-9_-]{0,63}$
• id must match ^[A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9._:/-]{0,255}$

Provider config

Define providers under secrets.providers:

{
  secrets: {
    providers: {
      default: { source: "env" },
      filemain: {
        source: "file",
        path: "~/.openclaw/secrets.json",
        mode: "json", // or "singleValue"
      },
      vault: {
        source: "exec",
        command: "/usr/local/bin/openclaw-vault-resolver",
        args: ["--profile", "prod"],
        passEnv: ["PATH", "VAULT_ADDR"],
        jsonOnly: true,
      },
    },
    defaults: {
      env: "default",
      file: "filemain",
      exec: "vault",
    },
    resolution: {
      maxProviderConcurrency: 4,
      maxRefsPerProvider: 512,
      maxBatchBytes: 262144,
    },
  },
}

Env provider

• Optional allowlist via allowlist.
• Missing/empty env values fail resolution.

File provider

• Reads local file from path.
• mode: "json" expects JSON object payload and resolves id as pointer.
• mode: "singleValue" expects ref id "value" and returns file contents.
• Path must pass ownership/permission checks.
• Windows fail-closed note: if ACL verification is unavailable for a path, resolution fails. For trusted paths only, set allowInsecurePath: true on that provider to bypass path security checks.

Exec provider

• Runs configured absolute binary path, no shell.
• By default, command must point to a regular file (not a symlink).
• Set allowSymlinkCommand: true to allow symlink command paths (for example Homebrew shims). OpenClaw validates the resolved target path.
• Pair allowSymlinkCommand with trustedDirs for package-manager paths (for example ["/opt/homebrew"]).
• Supports timeout, no-output timeout, output byte limits, env allowlist, and trusted dirs.
• Windows fail-closed note: if ACL verification is unavailable for the command path, resolution fails. For trusted paths only, set allowInsecurePath: true on that provider to bypass path security checks.

Request payload (stdin):

{ "protocolVersion": 1, "provider": "vault", "ids": ["providers/openai/apiKey"] }

Response payload (stdout):

{ "protocolVersion": 1, "values": { "providers/openai/apiKey": "<openai-api-key>" } } // pragma: allowlist secret

Optional per-id errors:

{
  "protocolVersion": 1,
  "values": {},
  "errors": { "providers/openai/apiKey": { "message": "not found" } }
}

Exec integration examples

1Password CLI

{
  secrets: {
    providers: {
      onepassword_openai: {
        source: "exec",
        command: "/opt/homebrew/bin/op",
        allowSymlinkCommand: true, // required for Homebrew symlinked binaries
        trustedDirs: ["/opt/homebrew"],
        args: ["read", "op://Personal/OpenClaw QA API Key/password"],
        passEnv: ["HOME"],
        jsonOnly: false,
      },
    },
  },
  models: {
    providers: {
      openai: {
        baseUrl: "https://api.openai.com/v1",
        models: [{ id: "gpt-5", name: "gpt-5" }],
        apiKey: { source: "exec", provider: "onepassword_openai", id: "value" },
      },
    },
  },
}

HashiCorp Vault CLI

{
  secrets: {
    providers: {
      vault_openai: {
        source: "exec",
        command: "/opt/homebrew/bin/vault",
        allowSymlinkCommand: true, // required for Homebrew symlinked binaries
        trustedDirs: ["/opt/homebrew"],
        args: ["kv", "get", "-field=OPENAI_API_KEY", "secret/openclaw"],
        passEnv: ["VAULT_ADDR", "VAULT_TOKEN"],
        jsonOnly: false,
      },
    },
  },
  models: {
    providers: {
      openai: {
        baseUrl: "https://api.openai.com/v1",
        models: [{ id: "gpt-5", name: "gpt-5" }],
        apiKey: { source: "exec", provider: "vault_openai", id: "value" },
      },
    },
  },
}

sops

{
  secrets: {
    providers: {
      sops_openai: {
        source: "exec",
        command: "/opt/homebrew/bin/sops",
        allowSymlinkCommand: true, // required for Homebrew symlinked binaries
        trustedDirs: ["/opt/homebrew"],
        args: ["-d", "--extract", '["providers"]["openai"]["apiKey"]', "/path/to/secrets.enc.json"],
        passEnv: ["SOPS_AGE_KEY_FILE"],
        jsonOnly: false,
      },
    },
  },
  models: {
    providers: {
      openai: {
        baseUrl: "https://api.openai.com/v1",
        models: [{ id: "gpt-5", name: "gpt-5" }],
        apiKey: { source: "exec", provider: "sops_openai", id: "value" },
      },
    },
  },
}

Supported credential surface

Canonical supported and unsupported credentials are listed in:

• SecretRef Credential Surface

Runtime-minted or rotating credentials and OAuth refresh material are intentionally excluded from read-only SecretRef resolution.

Required behavior and precedence

• Field without a ref: unchanged.
• Field with a ref: required on active surfaces during activation.
• If both plaintext and ref are present, ref takes precedence on supported precedence paths.

Warning and audit signals:

• SECRETS_REF_OVERRIDES_PLAINTEXT (runtime warning)
• REF_SHADOWED (audit finding when auth-profiles.json credentials take precedence over openclaw.json refs)

Google Chat compatibility behavior:

• serviceAccountRef takes precedence over plaintext serviceAccount.
• Plaintext value is ignored when sibling ref is set.

Activation triggers

Secret activation runs on:

• Startup (preflight plus final activation)
• Config reload hot-apply path
• Config reload restart-check path
• Manual reload via secrets.reload

Activation contract:

• Success swaps the snapshot atomically.
• Startup failure aborts gateway startup.
• Runtime reload failure keeps the last-known-good snapshot.

Degraded and recovered signals

When reload-time activation fails after a healthy state, OpenClaw enters degraded secrets state.

One-shot system event and log codes:

• SECRETS_RELOADER_DEGRADED
• SECRETS_RELOADER_RECOVERED

Behavior:

• Degraded: runtime keeps last-known-good snapshot.
• Recovered: emitted once after the next successful activation.
• Repeated failures while already degraded log warnings but do not spam events.
• Startup fail-fast does not emit degraded events because runtime never became active.

Command-path resolution

Command paths can opt into supported SecretRef resolution via gateway snapshot RPC.

There are two broad behaviors:

• Strict command paths (for example openclaw memory remote-memory paths and openclaw qr --remote) read from the active snapshot and fail fast when a required SecretRef is unavailable.
• Read-only command paths (for example openclaw status, openclaw status --all, openclaw channels status, openclaw channels resolve, and read-only doctor/config repair flows) also prefer the active snapshot, but degrade instead of aborting when a targeted SecretRef is unavailable in that command path.

Read-only behavior:

• When the gateway is running, these commands read from the active snapshot first.
• If gateway resolution is incomplete or the gateway is unavailable, they attempt targeted local fallback for the specific command surface.
• If a targeted SecretRef is still unavailable, the command continues with degraded read-only output and explicit diagnostics such as “configured but unavailable in this command path”.
• This degraded behavior is command-local only. It does not weaken runtime startup, reload, or send/auth paths.

Other notes:

• Snapshot refresh after backend secret rotation is handled by openclaw secrets reload.
• Gateway RPC method used by these command paths: secrets.resolve.

Audit and configure workflow

Default operator flow:

openclaw secrets audit --check
openclaw secrets configure
openclaw secrets audit --check

secrets audit

Findings include:

• plaintext values at rest (openclaw.json, auth-profiles.json, .env)
• unresolved refs
• precedence shadowing (auth-profiles.json taking priority over openclaw.json refs)
• legacy residues (auth.json, OAuth reminders)

secrets configure

Interactive helper that:

• configures secrets.providers first (env/file/exec, add/edit/remove)
• lets you select supported secret-bearing fields in openclaw.json plus auth-profiles.json for one agent scope
• can create a new auth-profiles.json mapping directly in the target picker
• captures SecretRef details (source, provider, id)
• runs preflight resolution
• can apply immediately

Helpful modes:

• openclaw secrets configure --providers-only
• openclaw secrets configure --skip-provider-setup
• openclaw secrets configure --agent <id>

configure apply defaults:

• scrub matching static credentials from auth-profiles.json for targeted providers
• scrub legacy static api_key entries from auth.json
• scrub matching known secret lines from <config-dir>/.env

secrets apply

Apply a saved plan:

openclaw secrets apply --from /tmp/openclaw-secrets-plan.json
openclaw secrets apply --from /tmp/openclaw-secrets-plan.json --dry-run

For strict target/path contract details and exact rejection rules, see:

• Secrets Apply Plan Contract

One-way safety policy

OpenClaw intentionally does not write rollback backups containing historical plaintext secret values.

Safety model:

• preflight must succeed before write mode
• runtime activation is validated before commit
• apply updates files using atomic file replacement and best-effort restore on failure

Legacy auth compatibility notes

For static credentials, runtime no longer depends on plaintext legacy auth storage.

• Runtime credential source is the resolved in-memory snapshot.
• Legacy static api_key entries are scrubbed when discovered.
• OAuth-related compatibility behavior remains separate.

Web UI note

Some SecretInput unions are easier to configure in raw editor mode than in form mode.

Related docs

• CLI commands: secrets
• Plan contract details: Secrets Apply Plan Contract
• Credential surface: SecretRef Credential Surface
• Auth setup: Authentication
• Security posture: Security
• Environment precedence: Environment Variables