openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix secrets audit: PLAINTEXT_FOUND false positive for codex-app-server marker in generated models.json

Summary

openclaw secrets audit reports PLAINTEXT_FOUND for providers.codex.apiKey in generated agents/*/agent/models.json files when the value is the OC-written marker string "codex-app-server". This is a false positive.

Expected behaviour

secrets audit should recognise that entries in generated agents/*/agent/models.json files are OC-written non-secret markers (as documented in the SecretRef credential surface docs) and either suppress the finding or classify it as LEGACY_RESIDUE / INFO rather than PLAINTEXT_FOUND / warn.

Actual behaviour

secrets audit emits a PLAINTEXT_FOUND (severity: warn) finding for every worker's generated models.json file:

[PLAINTEXT_FOUND] agents/<worker>/agent/models.json:providers.codex.apiKey
models.json provider apiKey is stored as plaintext.

This fires for all agents/workers — 17 files in our case (main agent + 16 workers), all flagged with PLAINTEXT_FOUND.

Root cause

The OC docs state:

For SecretRef-managed model providers, generated agents/*/agent/models.json entries persist non-secret markers (not resolved secret values) for apiKey/header surfaces. Marker persistence is source-authoritative: OpenClaw writes markers from the active source config snapshot (pre-resolution), not from resolved runtime secret values.

The Codex provider uses "codex-app-server" as its fixed authentication identifier — this is a non-secret marker string written by OC itself, not a user-supplied credential. The audit tool does not cross-reference against the known marker pattern and flags it as plaintext regardless.

Steps to reproduce

1. Enable the Codex provider (plugins.entries.codex.enabled: true)
2. Run openclaw secrets audit
3. Observe PLAINTEXT_FOUND for providers.codex.apiKey: "codex-app-server" in all generated agents/*/agent/models.json files

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.5.7
• OS: Windows 10 (x64)
• Node: v24.6.0

Suggested fix

The audit scanner should either:

• Skip agents/*/agent/models.json apiKey fields that match known OC-internal marker strings (e.g. codex-app-server, ollama-local), or
• Treat all generated models.json apiKey values as markers and emit INFO/LEGACY_RESIDUE rather than PLAINTEXT_FOUND when the corresponding openclaw.json source entry is a SecretRef