Free Model Router

Manages free AI models from OpenRouter for OpenClaw. Automatically ranks models by quality, configures fallbacks for rate-limit handling, and updates opencla...

Security Scan

The package claims to only manage OpenRouter free models, but the shipped code contains unrelated jobs that scrape social media, audit web pages, build outbound DMs, and write to a private `~/rick-vault`—behaviour that is disproportionate to the stated purpose and inconsistent with the registry metadata.

Purpose & Capability

The skill description and SKILL.md present a narrowly scoped tool to pick and rotate OpenRouter free models. The repository however includes multiple 'jobs' (buyer-intent-radar, outbound-builder, checkout-leak-watcher) that fetch tweets via an external CLI, crawl web pages, generate marketing DMs, and save data under ~/rick-vault. Those capabilities (lead scraping/outbound automation) are unrelated to model routing and are not disclosed in the high-level description or SKILL.md.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md only instructs running `freeride auto` / `freeride-watcher` and setting OPENROUTER_API_KEY. The code invoked by those commands, and additional job scripts, perform network calls (OpenRouter API, arbitrary web pages), spawn subprocesses (xpost, openclaw system event), read/write OpenClaw config (~/.openclaw/openclaw.json) and write many files under the user's home (e.g., ~/.openclaw/.freeride-cache.json, ~/.openclaw/.freeride-watcher-state.json, and ~/rick-vault/*). SKILL.md does not surface the scraping/outbound behaviors or the local data sinks.

Install Mechanism

Registry summary listed 'no install spec' / 'instruction-only', but the package contains setup.py, entry_points, and explicit pip install instructions in README and SKILL.md (pip install -e .). Installing the package will install console scripts that run the included code. The install approach is local-edit install (pip -e) — not high-risk by itself, but the packaging/install mismatch with registry metadata is an incoherence the user should notice.

Credentials

The code legitimately requires OPENROUTER_API_KEY for OpenRouter calls (and skill.json declares this), but the top-level registry metadata erroneously listed no required env vars—an inconsistency. Beyond OpenRouter, the code reads/writes the user's OpenClaw config and many home-dir paths (creating and populating ~/rick-vault), which surfaces more broad local access than promised. The jobs may collect social-media content and assemble outreach drafts; that requires network and local storage access and is not justified by the stated model-routing purpose.

Persistence & Privilege

The skill does not request 'always: true', but it installs console scripts that can run a watcher daemon which persists state under ~/.openclaw and can run continuously (watcher --daemon). The watcher will autonomously call APIs and rotate models, and other job scripts (if invoked) perform ongoing scraping and save results. Combined with the unrelated jobs and local file writes, this continuous/daemon capability increases the blast radius if installed without review.

What to consider before installing

This package is inconsistent: while it says it only manages OpenRouter 'free' models, the shipped code contains additional jobs that scrape social media, crawl web pages, generate outbound DMs, and store data in ~/rick-vault. Before installing or running: 1) Treat OPENROUTER_API_KEY as sensitive—use a test/restricted key and do not expose a production key until you trust the code. 2) Inspect the repository locally (you already have the files): review jobs/* to confirm you want scraping/outreach behavior. 3) Avoid installing globally—use an isolated virtualenv or disposable VM/container. 4) Backup your ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json before running and inspect any changes afterwards. 5) If you only want model routing, consider extracting or re-writing just the model-selection functions (main.py/watcher.py) and omit the jobs/outbound code. 6) Confirm the publisher/source (the skill metadata and _meta.json owner differ) and prefer installing only from a trusted upstream repository.

FreeRide - Free AI for OpenClaw

What This Skill Does

Configures OpenClaw to use free AI models from OpenRouter. Sets the best free model as primary, adds ranked fallbacks so rate limits don't interrupt the user, and preserves existing config.

Prerequisites

Before running any FreeRide command, ensure:

1. OPENROUTER_API_KEY is set. Check with echo $OPENROUTER_API_KEY. If empty, the user must get a free key at https://openrouter.ai/keys and set it:

   export OPENROUTER_API_KEY="sk-or-v1-..."
   # Or persist it:
   openclaw config set env.OPENROUTER_API_KEY "sk-or-v1-..."
   

2. The freeride CLI is installed. Check with which freeride. If not found:

   cd ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/free-ride
   pip install -e .
   

Primary Workflow

When the user wants free AI, run these steps in order:

# Step 1: Configure best free model + fallbacks
freeride auto

# Step 2: Restart gateway so OpenClaw picks up the changes
openclaw gateway restart

That's it. The user now has free AI with automatic fallback switching.

Verify by telling the user to send /status to check the active model.

Commands Reference

Command	When to use it
freeride auto	User wants free AI set up (most common)
freeride auto -f	User wants fallbacks but wants to keep their current primary model
freeride auto -c 10	User wants more fallbacks (default is 5)
freeride list	User wants to see available free models
freeride list -n 30	User wants to see all free models
freeride switch <model>	User wants a specific model (e.g. freeride switch qwen3-coder)
freeride switch <model> -f	Add specific model as fallback only
freeride status	Check current FreeRide configuration
freeride fallbacks	Update only the fallback models
freeride refresh	Force refresh the cached model list

After any command that changes config, always run openclaw gateway restart.

What It Writes to Config

FreeRide updates only these keys in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

• agents.defaults.model.primary — e.g. openrouter/qwen/qwen3-coder:free
• agents.defaults.model.fallbacks — e.g. ["openrouter/free", "nvidia/nemotron:free", ...]
• agents.defaults.models — allowlist so /model command shows the free models

Everything else (gateway, channels, plugins, env, customInstructions, named agents) is preserved.

The first fallback is always openrouter/free — OpenRouter's smart router that auto-picks the best available model based on the request.

Watcher (Optional)

For auto-rotation when rate limited, the user can run:

freeride-watcher --daemon    # Continuous monitoring
freeride-watcher --rotate    # Force rotate now
freeride-watcher --status    # Check rotation history

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
freeride: command not found	cd ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/free-ride && pip install -e .
OPENROUTER_API_KEY not set	User needs a key from https://openrouter.ai/keys
Changes not taking effect	openclaw gateway restart then /new for fresh session
Agent shows 0 tokens	Check freeride status — primary should be openrouter/<provider>/<model>:free