PR #6: docs(skill): note openclaw baseurl requirement

• Repository: bdougie/clawtel
• Author: bdougie
• State: closed | merged: True
• Link: https://github.com/bdougie/clawtel/pull/6

Description (problem / solution / changelog)

Why

Anyone wiring clawtel up behind an OpenClaw agent (clawchief, staffchief, openclaw-in-a-box) hits a silent failure: heartbeats flow, but every one of them has model="" and 0 tokens. The symptom looks like clawtel is broken, but clawtel is fine — tapes just never sees the traffic.

Root cause: OpenClaw instantiates its Anthropic client as

new Anthropic({ baseURL: model.baseUrl, ... })

When model.baseUrl is undefined (the default — config has no baseUrl set anywhere), that explicit baseURL: undefined overrides the SDK's normal readEnv("ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL") destructuring default. Downstream, options.baseURL = baseURL || 'https://api.anthropic.com' snaps to direct Anthropic, so the gateway holds a TLS connection straight to api.anthropic.com and tapes never records anything.

Setting models.providers.anthropic.baseUrl in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json is what actually routes traffic through tapes. Verified live against clawchief today — before the fix, zero nodes rows for user chats; immediately after, new nodes rows with model=claude-opus-4-6 and real token counts.

What this PR changes

• Step 1: new "OpenClaw users: ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL alone is not enough" subsection with the exact config snippet and a verification command (ss -tnp should show the gateway peered to 127.0.0.1:8080, not Anthropic's edge).
• Common issues: split the "Heartbeats send but all zeros" row into OpenClaw and non-OpenClaw variants, each pointing at the right fix.
• Added a row documenting the pre-0.1.4 cursor-stuck symptom (closed by #4 / fixed in v0.1.4) so users on older builds can self-diagnose without filing.

No code changes, no behavioral change to clawtel itself.

Related

• openclaw/openclaw#56679 — upstream feature request tracking the root cause (baseUrl override for built-in providers). Commented with live evidence + suggested fix. When that lands, the config workaround this PR documents can be removed.
• openclaw/openclaw#62276 — adjacent port-18789 collision between a custom system-level gateway unit and OpenClaw's user-level openclaw-gateway.service. Bit users of the same stack today; commented with repro + workaround.
• #4 (closed) — cursor format bug fixed in v0.1.4; documented in the new troubleshooting row.
• #7 (open) — aggregate()'s dominant-model collapse. A mixed-model claw (like the reference clawchief: opus chats + haiku heartbeat + sonnet cron) currently appears single-model on claw.tech; related to #1.

Changed files

• SKILL.md (modified, +35/-2)