openclaw-bridge#

Send messages to a running OpenClaw gateway and get responses back — directly from Claude Code, without leaving the terminal.

When to use#

• Delegate a task to OpenClaw that benefits from Kimi's context or local skills
• Ask for a second opinion from a different model/agent
• Hand off work between sessions (Claude Code → OpenClaw or vice versa)
• Trigger OpenClaw skills (e.g. run a cron, call a subagent) from Claude Code
• Notify OpenClaw about changes you made (shared filesystem, config updates)

Prerequisites#

• OpenClaw gateway running locally ( openclaw health should return ok)
• openclaw CLI in PATH

Commands#

ask — send a message and wait for response#

text

/ask-openclaw <message>

Internally runs:

bash

openclaw agent --message "<message>" --agent main --json

Response is parsed and returned inline.

notify — fire-and-forget (no wait)#

bash

openclaw agent --message "<message>" --agent main --json --timeout 5

Use when you don't need a response — just informing OpenClaw of a state change.

agents — list available agents#

bash

openclaw agents list

health — check gateway is up#

bash

openclaw health

Usage patterns#

Ask for opinion / second review#

text

Ask openclaw: "Review this SQL migration — is it safe to run on a live table with 10M rows?"

Claude Code will call openclaw agent --message "Review this SQL migration..." and show you Kimi's response.

Delegate a task#

text

Tell openclaw to run the skills-rag-update cron manually

bash

openclaw agent --message "Uruchom ręcznie cron skills-rag-update i podaj wynik" --agent main --json

Handoff with context#

When ending a Claude Code session, hand off state to OpenClaw:

bash

openclaw agent --message "HANDOFF od Claude Code: $(cat /path/to/.continue-here.md)" --agent main --json

Capture idea via OpenClaw#

bash

openclaw agent --message "capture-idea --title 'X' --topic architektura --tags 'a,b' --body 'Y'" --agent main --json

How Claude Code should handle this skill#

1. When user says "ask openclaw [something]" or "tell rook [something]":
   • Check gateway: openclaw health
   • If down: warn user, suggest openclaw daemon start
   • If up: run openclaw agent --message "<message>" --agent main --json
   • Parse .result.payloads[].text from JSON response
   • Show response inline
2. When delegating a multi-step task:
   • Write context to a temp file or shared vault note first
   • Send message with reference to that file
   • Wait for confirmation
3. When gateway is unreachable:
   • Do NOT retry in a loop
   • Report: "OpenClaw gateway not responding on localhost:18789 — check openclaw daemon start"

Response format#

json

{
  "runId": "...",
  "status": "ok",
  "summary": "completed",
  "result": {
    "payloads": [
      { "text": "agent response here", "mediaUrl": null }
    ],
    "meta": {
      "durationMs": 90617,
      "model": "kimi-k2.5",
      "usage": { ... }
    }
  }
}

Extract with:

bash

openclaw agent --message "..." --agent main --json | python3 -c "
import json, sys
d = json.load(sys.stdin)
for p in d['result']['payloads']:
    if p['text']: print(p['text'])
"

Limitations#

• Gateway must be running locally (loopback only by default)
• Auth token is read from ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json automatically by the CLI
• Large responses may be split across multiple payloads — concatenate them
• No streaming — waits for full response before returning
• Default timeout: 600s (override with --timeout)