Nick Trenkler
on april 4, 2026, anthropic pulled the plug on third-party harness access through claude subscriptions. if you're running openclaw with a max or pro plan and your agents stopped responding, here's how to fix it.
what changed
anthropic now requires a separate billing system called "extra usage" for openclaw calls. your max or pro plan still works for claude.ai, claude code, and claude cowork, but everything routed through openclaw now bills separately.
first step: activate extra usage in your anthropic account settings immediately. without it, your agents have no billing path and every request fails silently.
the authentication problem
even after activating extra usage, openclaw was still failing. the old oauth tokens started producing 60-second timeouts. the solution is to migrate to the claude cli backend.
step 1: migrate models to claude cli
ssh into your server and run this command directly (not through an agent or script):
openclaw models auth login --provider anthropic --method cli --set-default
this changes your model paths from anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6 to claude-cli/claude-sonnet-4-6.
first verify you have claude cli installed:
which claude && claude --version
if not authenticated:
claude auth login
step 2: generate a fresh token
after migration, run:
openclaw models auth setup-token --provider anthropic
when prompted for a token, open a second terminal and run:
openclaw models auth setup-token --provider anthropic
copy the generated token, paste it back into the first terminal, and give it a descriptive name.
step 3: fix the missing cli backend
here's where the documentation falls short. after migration, you'll likely see "missing auth - claude-cli" when checking status. the fix is adding a clibackends section to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:
json
{
"cliBackends": {
"claude-cli": {
"command": "/home/YOUR_USER/.local/bin/claude",
"args": [
"-p",
"--output-format", "stream-json",
"--include-partial-messages",
"--verbose",
"--permission-mode", "bypassPermissions"
],
"resumeArgs": [
"-p",
"--output-format", "stream-json",
"--include-partial-messages",
"--verbose",
"--permission-mode", "bypassPermissions",
"--resume", "{sessionId}"
],
"output": "jsonl",
"input": "stdin",
"modelArg": "--model",
"systemPromptArg": "--append-system-prompt",
"sessionArg": "--session-id",
"systemPromptWhen": "first",
"sessionMode": "always"
}
}
}
replace /home/YOUR_USER/.local/bin/claude with your actual claude binary path (find it with which claude).
what these parameters do
- -p enables pipe mode (non-interactive)
- --output-format stream-json enables jsonl streaming
- --include-partial-messages sends response fragments as they're generated
- --verbose enables detailed logging
- --permission-mode bypasspermissions skips interactive permission prompts
- resumeargs includes --resume {sessionid} for session continuation
- modelarg tells openclaw to pass the model via --model flag
- sessionmode: "always" auto-generates a uuid session id if none exists
verification
test with:
openclaw agent --local --agent main -m "hello, what model are you?"
you should see a response confirming your agents are working again.
what to monitor after migration
- extra usage balance. check settings > billing on claude.ai regularly.
- claude cli session. if it expires, run claude auth login again.
- rollback option. the migration creates a backup at openclaw.json.bak if you need to revert.
this fix should get your openclaw agents running again on anthropic's new billing system.
