openclaw-openclaw/docs/auth-credential-semantics.md

summary, title, read_when

summary	title	read_when
Canonical credential eligibility and resolution semantics for auth profiles	Auth credential semantics	Working on auth profile resolution or credential routing Debugging model auth failures or profile order

These semantics keep selection-time and runtime auth behavior aligned. They are shared by:

• resolveAuthProfileOrder (profile ordering)
• resolveApiKeyForProfile (runtime credential resolution)
• openclaw models status --probe
• openclaw doctor auth checks (doctor-auth)

Stable probe reason codes

Probe results carry a status bucket (ok, auth, rate_limit, billing, timeout, format, unknown, no_model) plus a stable reasonCode when the probe never reached a model call:

reasonCode	Meaning
excluded_by_auth_order	Profile omitted from the explicit auth order for its provider.
missing_credential	No inline credential or SecretRef is configured.
expired	Token expires is in the past.
invalid_expires	expires is not a valid positive Unix ms timestamp.
unresolved_ref	Configured SecretRef could not be resolved.
ineligible_profile	Profile is incompatible with provider config (includes malformed key input).
no_model	Credentials exist but no probeable model candidate resolved.

Eligibility checks report ok as the reason code for usable credentials.

Token credentials

Token credentials (type: "token") support inline token and/or tokenRef.

Eligibility rules

1. A token profile is ineligible when both token and tokenRef are absent (missing_credential).
2. expires is optional. When present it must be a finite number of Unix epoch milliseconds greater than 0 and no larger than the maximum JavaScript Date timestamp (8640000000000000).
3. If expires is invalid (wrong type, NaN, 0, negative, non-finite, or beyond that maximum), the profile is ineligible with invalid_expires.
4. If expires is in the past, the profile is ineligible with expired.
5. tokenRef does not bypass expires validation.

Resolution rules

1. Resolver semantics match eligibility semantics for expires.
2. For eligible profiles, token material may be resolved from the inline value or tokenRef.
3. Unresolvable refs produce unresolved_ref in models status --probe output.

Agent copy portability

Agent auth inheritance is read-through. When an agent has no local profile, it resolves profiles from the default/main agent store at runtime without copying secret material into its own credential store (agents/<agentId>/agent/openclaw-agent.sqlite).

Explicit copy flows, such as openclaw agents add, use this portability policy:

• api_key and token profiles are portable unless copyToAgents: false.
• oauth profiles are not portable by default because refresh tokens can be single-use or rotation-sensitive.
• Provider-owned OAuth flows may opt in with copyToAgents: true only when copying refresh material across agents is known safe; the opt-in only applies when the profile carries inline access/refresh material.

Non-portable profiles remain available through read-through inheritance unless the target agent signs in separately and creates its own local profile.

Config-only auth routes

auth.profiles entries with mode: "aws-sdk" are routing metadata, not stored credentials. They are valid when the target provider uses models.providers.<id>.auth: "aws-sdk", the route the plugin-owned Amazon Bedrock setup writes. These profile ids may appear in auth.order and session overrides even when no matching entry exists in the credential store.

Do not write type: "aws-sdk" into the credential store; stored credentials are only api_key, token, or oauth. If a legacy auth-profiles.json has such a marker, openclaw doctor --fix moves it to auth.profiles and removes the marker from the store.

Explicit auth order filtering

• When auth.order.<provider> or the auth-store order override is set for a provider, models status --probe only probes profile ids that remain in the resolved auth order for that provider. The stored override wins over auth.order config.
• A stored profile for that provider that is omitted from the explicit order is not silently tried later. Probe output reports it with reasonCode: excluded_by_auth_order and the detail Excluded by auth.order for this provider.

Probe target resolution

• Probe targets can come from auth profiles, environment credentials, or models.json (result source: profile, env, models.json).
• If a provider has credentials but OpenClaw cannot resolve a probeable model candidate for it, models status --probe reports status: no_model with reasonCode: no_model.

External CLI credential discovery

• Runtime-only credentials owned by external CLIs (Claude CLI for claude-cli, Codex CLI for openai, MiniMax CLI for minimax-portal) are discovered only when the provider, runtime, or auth profile is in scope for the current operation, or when a stored local profile for that external source already exists.
• Auth-store callers choose an explicit external-CLI discovery mode: none for persisted/plugin auth only, existing for refreshing already stored external CLI profiles, or scoped for a concrete provider/profile set.
• Read-only/status paths pass allowKeychainPrompt: false; they use file-backed external CLI credentials only and do not read or reuse macOS Keychain results.

OAuth SecretRef Policy Guard

SecretRef input is for static credentials only. OAuth credentials are runtime-mutable (refresh flows persist rotated tokens), so SecretRef-backed OAuth material would split mutable state across stores.

• If a profile credential is type: "oauth", SecretRef objects are rejected for any credential material field on that profile.
• If auth.profiles.<id>.mode is "oauth", SecretRef-backed keyRef/tokenRef input for that profile is rejected.
• Violations are hard failures (thrown errors) in startup/reload secret preparation and profile resolution paths.

Legacy-Compatible Messaging

For script compatibility, probe errors keep this first line unchanged:

Auth profile credentials are missing or expired.

Human-friendly detail and the stable reason code follow on subsequent lines in the form ↳ Auth reason [code]: ....

Related

• Secrets management
• Auth storage