#Cannot get any provider to work - Ollama, Groq, OpenRouter all fail

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

fresh harness
#

Hi everyone,
I've been trying to set up OpenClaw on Windows 11 for 2 days now, but I cannot get any provider to work. I've tried Ollama, Groq, and OpenRouter, but all fail with different errors.
Environment:

  • Windows 11 native (not WSL2)
  • OpenClaw version: 2026.3.13
    Ollama:
  • Ollama is running with qwen2.5:3b model
  • Gateway starts correctly showing: [gateway] agent model: ollama/qwen2.5:3b
  • But when I send a message in TUI, I get:
    Agent failed before reply: No API key found for provider "ollama".
    Auth store: C:\Users\Administrator.openclaw\agents\main\agent\auth-profiles.json

text

  • I created auth-profiles.json with:
    json
    {
    "ollama": {
    "provider": "ollama",
    "mode": "none"
    }
    }
    But still the same error.

Groq:

API key: gsk_xxx...

Base URL: https://api.groq.com/openai/v1

Model set to llama-3.1-8b-instant

Gateway log shows: [gateway] agent model: openai/llama-3.1-8b-instant

TUI error:
text
Agent failed before reply: Unknown model: openai/llama-3.1-8b-instant
OpenRouter:

API key: sk-or-v1-xxx...

Base URL: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1

Model set to openrouter/free

TUI error:
text
Agent failed before reply: No API key found for provider "openrouter"
What I've tried:
Setting environment variables (OPENAI_API_KEY, OPENAI_BASE_URL)
Creating auth-profiles.json in various formats
Running openclaw doctor --fix
Deleting all config and reinstalling multiple times
Setting gateway.mode local
Gateway always starts fine and TUI connects, but when I send a message, it always fails with one of the above errors.
Is there any known working configuration for Windows native? Or do I need to use WSL2? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

spare quartz
#

Have you tried Claude yet? Most of the errors I got when I first set up OpenClaw were solved by Claude. ChatGPT and Grok both failed miserably before I realized that Claude knew what it was doing.

fresh harness
spare quartz
median crescentBOT
#

Yep — native Windows can work, but your errors are exactly what happens when provider IDs/auth don’t line up.

You’ve got 3 separate issues:

  1. Ollama
  • No API key found for provider "ollama" means OpenClaw didn’t resolve Ollama auth.
  • Your manual auth-profiles.json entry is invalid (mode: "none" is not a valid auth credential type there).
  • For Ollama, use OLLAMA_API_KEY=ollama-local (dummy marker key is fine), or set models.providers.ollama.apiKey.
  1. Groq
  • openai/llama-3.1-8b-instant is the wrong namespace for Groq.
  • Must be groq/<model-id> (pick exact ID from openclaw models list).
  1. OpenRouter
  • Needs OPENROUTER_API_KEY (not just OPENAI vars).
  • Model ref must be openrouter/<provider>/<model>, not openrouter/free.
#

Clean fix path (recommended)

Run these on the gateway host:

openclaw --version
openclaw models status
openclaw models auth add
openclaw models list --plain

Then:

  • add credentials for ollama, groq, openrouter via models auth add
  • set one provider/model at a time:
# 
openclaw models set ollama/<exact-id>
# test in TUI
openclaw models set groq/<exact-id>
# test
openclaw models set openrouter/<exact-id>
# test

If running as daemon/service on Windows, put keys in:

C:\Users\<you>\.openclaw\.env

then restart: