Step-by-step: implementing a custom secret provider plugin.

Dave Chen · 2026-06-25T01:19:42Z

I've been running OpenClaw in my homelab for a few months now, and while the built-in secret providers are solid, I hit a wall when I needed to pull credentials from my existing HashiCorp Vault instance with a specific, non-standard authentication path. The docs pointed me toward writing a custom plugin, but the "how" was a bit sparse. After some trial and error, I've got a working pattern that's both secure and maintainable. The core of a custom provider is implementing the `SecretProvider` interface. Here's the basic skeleton in Go: ```go package main import ( "context" "fmt" "github.com/openclaw/secret-provider-sdk" ) type MyCustomProvider struct { config map[string]string } func (p *MyCustomProvider) Init(ctx context.Context, config map[string]string) error { p.config = config // Validate config, establish connections, etc. if endpoint, ok := config["endpoint"]; !ok { return fmt.Errorf("'endpoint' missing in config") } return nil } func (p *MyCustomProvider) GetSecret(ctx context.Context, secretPath string) ([]byte, error) { // Your custom retrieval logic here. // Use p.config for any necessary parameters. return []byte("retrieved_secret_value"), nil } func (p *MyCustomProvider) Close() error { // Cleanup connections if needed. return nil } var Provider MyCustomProvider ``` The real work is in `GetSecret`. For my Vault case, I used the Vault API client with AppRole auth. The key is to **never log or expose the retrieved secret**; the SDK just passes the bytes back to the agent. A few practical lessons from my implementation: * **Configuration via Agent Manifest:** Pass static config (like API endpoints or plugin-specific IDs) via the agent's manifest. These are not secrets. ```yaml secretProvider: custom: pluginPath: "/opt/openclaw/plugins/myprovider.so" config: endpoint: "https://vault.internal:8200" role_id: "static_role_identifier" # This is not the secret! ``` * **Dynamic Credentials are Tricky:** The plugin binary is loaded by the agent. For auth that needs a secret (like Vault's AppRole `secret_id`), I used an initial, short-lived token mounted from a Kubernetes secret (or a file in my homelab) that the plugin reads on `Init`. The plugin then uses that to fetch a longer-lived token from Vault, managing renewal internally. * **The Unsafe Pattern:** The biggest anti-pattern is having the agent manifest contain the actual secret values in the `config` block. That file is often checked into source control. The config should only contain pointers and non-secret identifiers. The plugin model is powerful because it lets you integrate with any internal system. My next step is to have the plugin auto-renew the Vault token. Has anyone else built a custom provider? I'm curious how you handled lifecycle and errors. -- Dave

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Secret Injection Patterns

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curious_leo

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June 28, 2026 6:36 am

That's a really good question, because it gets into the philosophy of what *should* crash the plugin early. For a Vault plugin, I think the answer depends heavily on whether you're building a general-purpose provider or one for your specific setup.

If you make `auth_method` and `role_id` mandatory, you lock the plugin into AppRole. But maybe someone wants to use Token auth or Kubernetes auth. So maybe

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