Principle:Openclaw Openclaw Credential Acquisition
| Knowledge Sources | |
|---|---|
| Domains | Messaging, Authentication, Configuration |
| Last Updated | 2026-02-06 12:00 GMT |
Overview
Credential acquisition is the process of obtaining platform-specific bot authentication tokens from external services before a messaging channel can be connected to the OpenClaw gateway.
Description
Every messaging platform requires its own form of authentication credential before a bot or agent can send and receive messages. For Telegram, operators must interact with BotFather to create a bot and receive a bot token. Discord requires navigating the Discord Developer Portal to create an application, add a bot user, and copy the bot token. Slack uses a multi-token system with bot tokens and app-level tokens generated through the Slack API console.
The credential acquisition phase sits outside the OpenClaw codebase itself -- it is a prerequisite step that occurs on the platform vendor's side. However, OpenClaw's CLI provides guided prompts that tell the operator exactly which credential is needed, where to obtain it, and in what format to supply it. This bridging of external documentation into the CLI workflow reduces friction and error rates during channel setup.
Different channels have different credential shapes. Some use a single token string (Telegram's bot token, Discord's bot token), some require multiple tokens (Slack's bot token plus app token for socket mode), and some require file paths or environment variable references (Signal's CLI path, iMessage's database path). The credential acquisition principle abstracts over these variations so that the channel registration step can uniformly consume a ChannelSetupInput record regardless of platform.
Usage
This principle applies whenever an operator sets up a new messaging channel connection. Before running openclaw channels add, the operator must obtain the appropriate credentials from the target platform. The CLI's interactive wizard and flag-based modes both guide and validate these credentials before they are persisted to the OpenClaw configuration.
Theoretical Basis
The credential acquisition pattern follows a three-phase model:
- External provisioning -- The operator creates a bot or app entity on the platform's developer portal and receives raw authentication material (tokens, keys, secrets).
- CLI-guided input -- The OpenClaw CLI prompts for the credential, validates its format, and optionally resolves token files or environment variable references.
- Normalization -- The raw credential is mapped into the uniform
ChannelSetupInputtype, which the channel plugin'sapplyAccountConfighook consumes.
This separation ensures that platform-specific credential semantics do not leak into the core registration pipeline. Each channel plugin declares which fields of ChannelSetupInput it requires (e.g., Telegram needs botToken, Discord needs token, Slack needs botToken and appToken), and the CLI validates presence before proceeding.