tinkerclaw-tinker-bridge

⚠️ Fork-only — not for general installation.

This plugin scripts the claude CLI's stream-json interface to drive your gateway off your Claude Code subscription. Anthropic's ToS for the subscription is silent on this exact pattern, but it lives in the gray zone and we don't want to invite a ToS update that breaks it.

The package stays "private": true and publishToNpm: false. It's not on npm. If you cloned this fork to use it, that's fine — single-user personal use is the intended scope. Don't redistribute.

What it does (briefly)

Spawns a long-lived claude subprocess per gateway session and shims its NDJSON stream into OpenClaw's StreamingEvent interface. Your existing ~/.claude/.credentials.json OAuth powers the model. No API key.

What it needs

1. Active claude CLI install + login.
2. OpenClaw gateway running (this fork).
3. Node 22+.

Configuration

Optional knobs in openclaw.json under plugins.entries.tinkerclaw-tinker-bridge.config:

key	default	description
binary	claude (PATH)	Absolute path to the claude CLI binary.
cwd	~/.openclaw/jarvis-workspace	Working dir for each subprocess. Used for CLAUDE.md loading + transcript persistence.
disallowedTools	["Agent","ExitPlanMode","AskUserQuestion","TodoWrite","TaskCreate","TaskUpdate","TaskList","TaskGet","TaskStop","TaskOutput"]	Tools to disable inside claude. See "Authority" below — the default is permissive.
warmOnBoot	[]	Session keys to pre-spawn at gateway start (eliminates ~10s cold-start on first turn).

Authority — read this before installing

This plugin gives the claude subprocess broad authority on your machine, by design. Stating it plainly because the defaults are permissive, not restrictive:

• Bash, Read, Write, Edit, Grep and Glob are ENABLED by default. The subprocess can read, write and execute anything your user account can. The disallowedTools default only blocks Agent (which would fork more claude processes) and Claude Code's own IDE/task-UX tools, which don't apply to a gateway session.
• The subprocess runs with --permission-mode bypassPermissions. It does not stop to ask you before a tool call. That is what makes an unattended gateway session work, and it is also why the point above matters.
• It runs in cwd (default ~/.openclaw/jarvis-workspace) and loads whatever CLAUDE.md it finds there.

If you want a restrictive profile, set disallowedTools explicitly in your config — the config value replaces the default list entirely, it does not merge with it.

Models

claude-code/claude-opus-4-7, claude-code/claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-code/claude-haiku-4-5 — matches your subscription tier.

Why fork-only

• ToS gray zone. Subscription-driven scripted use is not explicitly endorsed; mass-distributing a tool that does this could trigger Anthropic's response.
• Cold-start cost. Each new session spawns a subprocess. Doesn't scale to many users.
• OAuth refresh races. Single-user serialization works; multi-user would need a refresh-token coordinator that doesn't exist yet.

If Anthropic ever endorses Channels for this use case, we'd ship a proper public plugin then. Until then, fork-only.

License

Apache-2.0 source, but: see warning above re. distribution.