openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Feature request: expose image generation providers over gateway RPC [1 comments, 2 participants]

Problem

External control UIs can already read model catalog data through models.list and TTS provider metadata through tts.providers. There does not appear to be an equivalent read-only gateway RPC for image generation providers.

The practical fallback is to invoke openclaw infer image providers --json, which starts a Node CLI process. On small hosted machines this can be expensive enough to contribute to CPU, memory, and disk I/O pressure, especially if a UI refreshes provider data in the background.

Request

Please add a read-only gateway method, for example image.providers, classified under the existing operator read scope. The method should return registered image-generation provider metadata without credentials or secrets.

A useful response shape would include:

• id
• label
• configured
• defaultModel
• models
• capabilities such as generate/edit/geometry/output support

This is close to the data already surfaced by the image_generate tool when called with action: "list", but exposed as a lightweight gateway RPC suitable for dashboards/control UIs.

Use case

OpenClaw Console needs to render image generation provider settings without periodically spawning openclaw infer image providers --json. It can use tts.providers for TTS, but image providers currently have no comparable RPC path.

Notes

This should be read-only and should not expose API keys, SecretRefs, or provider config values beyond derived readiness/configured status.