We’re getting into using OpenClaw heavily, as we find useful tips and tricks we’ll add them here…
API usage costs
These can get very costly very quickly if you’re not careful, especially if you are using Anthropic Opus 4.5. Opus 4.5 is brilliant for creative tasks, but unnecessarily expensive for general tasks. Solutions:
- Get into using a different model for the main agent, only switching it to use to Opus 4.5 when you need its better thinking. You’ll need to learn how to change models to achieve this.
- Get a Claude Code Max plan and sign OpenClaw into it using OAuth (you can install Claude Code on your VPS using “
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code” to then use the necessary “claude setup-token” command if your main computer is Windows). Using OpenClaw with a Claude Code subscription is against the Anthropic terms and conditions and they may well drop the ban hammer on your account for doing it, but for now lots of people doing it and getting away with it. Because of the ban risk if you already use Clause Code I’d recommend creating a separate Claude Code account just for OpenClaw and paying for a separate subscription.
Troubleshooting
Constant “(no output)” responses after installing.
We hit this on one of our locked down VPS (Virtual Private Servers) and it was really hard to debug, but turned out to be a missing rule in our Linux firewall on the VPS. OpenClaw uses IPv6 as well as IPv4 for some things and if it can’t get a response the IPv6 gateway you get (no output) and no obvious error message as to the exact cause in the log (well they are obvious if your a Linux guru in that area, but not obvious in the sense of “error IPv6 connection issue”). Unlike IPv4, IPv6 needs a special rule on a locked down firewalls INPUTS to allow responses to ICMPv6, after lots of digging we discovered we we’re missing that rule. Here’s the set of IPv6 input rules that solved it:
sudo ip6tables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
sudo ip6tables -A INPUT -p ipv6-icmp -j ACCEPT
sudo ip6tables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
sudo ip6tables -P INPUT DROP
