you can set it when you set the bot up

[sharp sundial]

Yes, did that originally.

[naive rapids]

What issue are you running into? Give me the full picture — what you're trying to do, what's happening instead, and any error messages you're seeing. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

Clawbot says the auth wroks, but claude doesn't work. It keeps saying the config file is wrong and trying different things. Is there an current working config example we can use that works?

[naive rapids]

"Config file is wrong" is vague — can you paste the actual error message you're seeing? That'll tell us exactly what's off.

In the meantime, here's a minimal working config for Anthropic:

providers:
  anthropic:
    apiKey: "sk-ant-..." # or use env: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

agent:
  provider: anthropic
  model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514

Make sure your API key is valid and has credits. You can test it directly:

clawdbot doctor

That'll check your provider auth. Paste what it says and we'll go from there. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

do we still use apiKey with claude max oauth?

[naive rapids]

Ah, Claude Max OAuth — no, you don't use apiKey for that. OAuth flow is different.

For Claude Max, your config should look like:

providers:
  anthropic:
    authMethod: oauth
    # OAuth tokens are managed automatically after you authenticate

Then run:

clawdbot auth anthropic

That'll open a browser for the OAuth flow. Once you authorize, Clawdbot stores and refreshes the tokens automatically.

After auth, run clawdbot doctor to confirm it's working. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

how does the browser open on a VPS?

[naive rapids]

Good catch — on a headless VPS it'll give you a URL to open on any browser (your laptop, phone, whatever). You visit the link, authorize, and it completes the flow.

Try:

clawdbot auth anthropic

It should detect there's no display and print something like:

Open this URL in a browser: https://...
Waiting for authorization...

Copy that URL, open it on your local machine, log in with your Claude Max account, authorize, and the CLI will pick up the tokens automatically.

If that's not working, paste what you see when you run the auth command. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

clawdbot auth anthropic
clawdbot: command not found

[naive rapids]

Clawdbot isn't in your PATH. Either it's not installed, or the shell doesn't know where to find it.

Try these:

# Check if it exists somewhere
which clawdbot || find ~ -name "clawdbot" -type f 2>/dev/null | head -5

# If you installed via npm/pnpm globally
npx clawdbot auth anthropic

# Or if it's in ~/clawdbot
~/clawdbot/bin/clawdbot auth anthropic

How did you install Clawdbot originally? That'll tell us where it lives. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

clawdbot is installed. not sure why it's not showing up . root@ubuntu-4gb-hel1-1:~# clawdbot auth anthropic
clawdbot: command not found
root@ubuntu-4gb-hel1-1:~# cd clawdbot
root@ubuntu-4gb-hel1-1:~/clawdbot# clawdbot auth anthropic
clawdbot: command not found
root@ubuntu-4gb-hel1-1:~/clawdbot# which clawdbot || find ~ -name "clawdbot" -type f 2>/dev/null | head -5
root@ubuntu-4gb-hel1-1:~/clawdbot# npx clawdbot auth anthropic
Command 'npx' not found, but can be installed with:
apt install npm
root@ubuntu-4gb-hel1-1:~/clawdbot# ~/clawdbot/bin/clawdbot auth anthropic
-bash: /root/clawdbot/bin/clawdbot: No such file or directory
root@ubuntu-4gb-hel1-1:~/clawdbot#

[naive rapids]

The folder exists but nothing's actually installed in it. Let's see what's there:

ls -la ~/clawdbot/

If it's mostly empty or missing key files, you'll want to reinstall. The standard install is:

curl -fsSL https://clawd.bot/install.sh | bash

That'll set everything up and add it to your PATH. After it finishes, restart your shell (exec bash) and then clawdbot should work.

Paste the ls -la output so we can see what state you're in. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

here is the output

[naive rapids]

You've got the git repo cloned but haven't installed the dependencies — there's no node_modules. And you don't have Node.js/npm installed.

For a VPS, you need to:

# Install Node.js (v20+)
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_22.x | bash -
apt-get install -y nodejs

# Install pnpm
npm install -g pnpm

# Install dependencies
cd ~/clawdbot
pnpm install

# Now you can run clawdbot via pnpm
pnpm clawdbot doctor
pnpm clawdbot auth anthropic

Or if you want the binary in PATH, after pnpm install:

pnpm link --global

Then clawdbot will work directly. Run through those steps and let me know where you get stuck. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

Doctor shows everything is working! ✅

Key findings:

• Telegram: ok (@mybot_bot) - Bot connected successfully
• Agents: main (default) - Agent is active
• No auth errors - OAuth working properly

Minor issues (non-critical):

• File permissions too open (recommend chmod 700 ~/.clawdbot and chmod 600 ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json)

[naive rapids]

Nice, you're in business! 🎉

Fix those permissions for security (especially on a VPS):

chmod 700 ~/.clawdbot
chmod 600 ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json

Now fire it up:

pnpm clawdbot gateway start

Send a message to your Telegram bot and see if it responds. You're good to go! 🦞

[sharp sundial]

we are running clawdbot in a docker per the clawdbot setup docs for hetzner

[naive rapids]

Ah, Docker setup — then you'd use docker-compose instead:

cd ~/clawdbot
docker-compose up -d

Check the logs to make sure it's running:

docker-compose logs -f

If you need to run clawdbot commands inside the container:

docker-compose exec clawdbot clawdbot doctor

Since doctor already passed, just spin up the container and test your Telegram bot. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

The bot fails with ⚠️ Agent failed before reply: No API key found for provider "anthropic". Auth store: /home/node/.clawdbot/agents/main/agent/auth-profiles.json (agentDir: /home/node/.clawdbot/agents/main/agent). Configure auth for this agent (clawdbot agents add <id>) or copy auth-profiles.json from the main agentDir.
Logs: clawdbot logs --follow

[naive rapids]

The auth tokens are on your host machine but the Docker container can't see them — they're at different paths.

You need to run auth inside the container:

docker-compose exec clawdbot clawdbot auth anthropic

That'll give you the OAuth URL to open in your browser. Complete the flow, and the tokens will be stored where the container expects them.

Then restart the container:

docker-compose restart

Try messaging the bot again. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

Bash(ssh clawdbot "cd ~/clawdbot && docker compose exec clawdbot node dist/index.js auth anthropic") timeout: 30s
⎿  Error: Exit code 1
error: unknown command 'auth'
(Did you mean health?)

[naive rapids]

Ah, the auth command might not be exposed that way in the Docker build. Let's copy the auth from your host into the container instead.

First, find where your auth tokens are on the host:

cat ~/.clawdbot/auth-profiles.json
# or
cat ~/.clawdbot/agents/main/agent/auth-profiles.json

Then copy it into the container:

docker-compose cp ~/.clawdbot/auth-profiles.json clawdbot:/home/node/.clawdbot/agents/main/agent/auth-profiles.json

Or mount it in your docker-compose.yml — add this under volumes:

volumes:
  - ~/.clawdbot:/home/node/.clawdbot

Then docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d to pick up the new mount.

Which approach works better for your setup? 🦞

[sharp sundial]

We already have ~/.clawdbot mounted in docker-compose.yml:

volumes:
- /root/.clawdbot:/home/node/.clawdbot
- /root/clawd:/home/node/clawd
- /root/.claude:/home/node/.claude

The auth files are already shared between host and container. The issue is the token format or validation is failing when the agent
actually tries to use it.

[naive rapids]

Right, so the mount is there but the file path might not match. The container is looking for:
/home/node/.clawdbot/agents/main/agent/auth-profiles.json

Which means on your host it should be at:
/root/.clawdbot/agents/main/agent/auth-profiles.json

Check if that file exists and has content:

cat /root/.clawdbot/agents/main/agent/auth-profiles.json

If it's empty or missing, your OAuth tokens might be stored elsewhere. Also check:

find /root/.clawdbot -name "auth-profiles.json" -o -name "*.json" | xargs ls -la

That'll show us where the auth actually landed when you ran pnpm clawdbot auth anthropic. 🦞

[sharp sundial]

Both auth files exist and are readable by the container. The token is there. Since 05:12 PM claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929
models status shows "ok" but actual usage fails, this might be a token validation issue
at runtime.
Both files are accessible to the container with the OAuth token. The models status command shows auth is OK, but when the agent
actually tries to use it, it fails.
This is strange. The token is there in both places. Let me check if there's something wrong with the token validation logic or if we need to restart the container to pick up the latest changes.

Actually, looking at the error message more carefully: "No API key found for provider 'anthropic'". It's looking for an API key but we have OAuth tokens. Maybe the issue is that the runtime is expecting an API key format but we're providing OAuth tokens?

[sharp sundial]

Both auth files exist and are readable by the container. The token is there. Since 05:12 PM claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929
models status shows "ok" but actual usage fails, this might be a token validation issue
at runtime.
Both files are accessible to the container with the OAuth token. The models status command shows auth is OK, but when the agent
actually tries to use it, it fails.
This is strange. The token is there in both places. Let me check if there's something wrong with the token validation logic or if we need to restart the container to pick up the latest changes.

Actually, looking at the error message more carefully: "No API key found for provider 'anthropic'". It's looking for an API key but we have OAuth tokens. Maybe the issue is that the runtime is expecting an API key format but we're providing OAuth tokens?