openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Skill: ocli-api — call any REST API via CLI, no MCP server needed [1 comments, 2 participants]

Problem

Connecting AI agents to REST APIs today means either:

1. MCP Naive — register every endpoint as a tool. At 100+ endpoints, that's 15K+ tokens of JSON schemas injected every turn. At GitHub API scale (845 endpoints) it's 130K tokens/turn.
2. MCP+Search — better, but still requires a running MCP server, transport layer, and search results carry full JSON schemas back to context.

REDDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1rsnp63/turn_10000_api_endpoints_into_one_cli_tool/

Both approaches require a persistent server process and MCP-aware client. This is the "MCP madness" — every new API means another server to run, another transport to manage, another set of tool schemas eating your context window.

Solution

openapi-to-cli (ocli) turns any OpenAPI/Swagger spec into CLI commands at runtime. The agent needs only 1 tool (execute_command) and discovers endpoints via BM25 search:

Agent: ocli commands --query "create pull request" --limit 3
→  repos_owner_repo_pulls_post   post    /repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls  Create a pull request

Agent: ocli repos_owner_repo_pulls_post --help
→  Options: --owner (required) --repo (required) --title --head --base --body

Agent: ocli repos_owner_repo_pulls_post --owner octocat --repo hello --title "Fix bug" --head feature --base main
→  { "number": 42, "html_url": "..." }

Benchmark results (honest, all strategies use same BM25 engine):

At 845 endpoints, MCP Naive costs $1,172/month vs CLI at $11/month (100 tasks/day, Sonnet $3/M).

Proposed skill

---
name: ocli-api
description: Turn any OpenAPI/Swagger API into CLI commands and call them. Search endpoints with BM25, check parameters, execute — no MCP server needed.
version: 1.0.0
user-invocable: true
metadata: {"openclaw":{"emoji":"🔌","requires":{"bins":["ocli"]}}}
homepage: https://github.com/EvilFreelancer/openapi-to-cli
---

Full SKILL.md: github.com/EvilFreelancer/openapi-to-cli/tree/feat/openclaw-skill-and-comparison/skills/ocli-api

What the skill teaches the agent

1. Search — ocli commands --query "..." --limit 5 (BM25 ranked)
2. Inspect — ocli <command> --help (text parameters, not JSON schemas)
3. Execute — ocli <command> --flag value (plain HTTP, JSON response)

Installation

# From ClawHub (once published)
clawhub install ocli-api

# Prerequisite
npm install -g openapi-to-cli

# Onboard your first API
ocli profiles add myapi \
  --api-base-url https://api.example.com \
  --openapi-spec https://api.example.com/openapi.json \
  --api-bearer-token "$TOKEN"

Or manually — copy SKILL.md to ~/.openclaw/skills/ocli-api/SKILL.md.

Why this belongs in openclaw skills

• Zero infrastructure — npm install -g openapi-to-cli, no server process
• Universal — works with any OpenAPI/Swagger spec (Bitrix24, GitHub, Box, Petstore, internal APIs)
• Token-efficient — 158 tok overhead vs 2,945+ for MCP approaches
• Composable — pipes, chains, shell scripts natively
• Multiple APIs — profiles with per-API auth, endpoint filtering, command prefixes
• Replaces MCP for REST APIs — agent doesn't need MCP-aware client, just shell access