Openclaw Claude Bridge

openclaw-claude-bridge

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An OpenAI-compatible HTTP proxy that lets OpenClaw agents use Claude through Claude Code CLI — with tool calling, session memory, and extended thinking.

Why This Exists

OpenClaw speaks the OpenAI API format. Claude Code CLI speaks its own format. This bridge sits in between and translates — so your OC agents can talk to Claude without either side needing to change.

Key principle: The bridge never executes tools. It only translates. OpenClaw owns the tool loop.

Quick Start

How It Works

Request Flow

1. OpenClaw sends a standard OpenAI chat completion request (messages, tools, model)
2. Bridge translates the messages into Claude CLI's text format and injects tool-calling instructions into the system prompt
3. Claude CLI processes the request and streams back a response
4. Bridge parses the response — if Claude wants to call a tool, it converts the  XML into OpenAI's tool_calls format; otherwise it returns clean text
5. OpenClaw either executes the requested tools and sends another request, or delivers the final answer to the user

Session Memory

Each agent in each conversation gets its own persistent Claude CLI session. This means Claude remembers previous messages without the bridge needing to resend the full history every time.

The routing key is channel + agent name, so agents in the same channel never interfere with each other.

Session state survives restarts — mappings and request history are saved to state.json and restored on startup. Stale sessions (where the CLI session file no longer exists) are automatically pruned.

For more details on the three-tier session lookup and edge cases, see docs/architecture.md.

Tool Calling

The bridge reads the tools array from OpenClaw's request and dynamically generates…