How to Use ClawHub Skills in Claude Code (Plus a Plugin for CLI and API Key Management)

Claude Code is my daily driver for everything. All my dev work goes through it. The codebase understanding, parallel agents, skills, MCP servers. For actual coding, nothing else is even close.

But I kept seeing OpenClaw posts everywhere and feeling a bit jealous. Not of the whole platform. OpenClaw is a general-purpose life agent. It manages your emails, your calendar, your WhatsApp. I do not need my AI to text people for me. But one thing about OpenClaw genuinely pissed me off in a good way: ClawHub.

ClawHub is their skill marketplace. 3,000+ skills. Search from the terminal, install, done. Like npm but for agent skills. And every time I saw someone install a skill in two seconds, I thought: why the hell can I not do that in Claude Code?

Turns out I can. And the reason is almost embarrassingly simple.

They Use the Same Damn Format

ClawHub skills and Claude Code skills both follow the Agent Skills open standard. A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file. That is it. Same format. Same spec. Both platforms just read the same files.

So the 3,000+ skills on ClawHub? They work in Claude Code. No adapter. No conversion. No compatibility shim. You drop them in the right folder and Claude picks them up next session.

I literally sat there for a minute after figuring this out, annoyed at myself for not checking sooner. I had been planning to build a whole skill registry. For nothing.

Three Commands. That Is It.

Install the ClawHub CLI:

npm i -g clawhub

Tell it where Claude Code reads skills. Add this to your .zshrc:

export CLAWHUB_WORKDIR="$HOME/.claude"

Search and install:

clawhub search "kubernetes"
clawhub search "docker"
clawhub install k8s-deploy

Start Claude Code. The skill is there. I am not overselling this. It is genuinely three commands.

The Annoying Part: Every Skill Needs a CLI Tool

OK so here is where it gets real. Most ClawHub skills are wrappers around actual CLI tools. Kubernetes skill? Needs kubectl. Terraform skill? Needs the terraform binary. And those tools need API keys, tokens, kubeconfigs, whatever.

I already had a little system for this. A shell script called get-secret.sh that keeps API keys in ~/.config/secrets/. Dead simple, flat files:

~/.config/secrets/
├── config.yaml            # Which services exist
├── get-secret.sh          # Fetches keys
├── anthropic/credentials  # KEY=value, one per line
├── openai/credentials
├── coolify/credentials
└── ...

Problem was, Claude had no idea this existed. Every single session, when it hit a missing tool: "I don't have access to kubectl, could you install it?" Then next session, same thing. "Where are the credentials for this service?" Over and over. Drove me nuts.

So I Built a Plugin to Shut It Up

I made a Claude Code plugin called cli-vault that teaches Claude how to handle CLI tools and credentials once and for all.

/plugin marketplace add ercan2158/cli-vault

Run /vault setup to initialize the credential vault.

Now when Claude needs a CLI tool, it knows what to do. /cli-onboard kubectl and it checks if kubectl is installed, installs it via brew if not, asks you for the credentials, stores them in the vault, and verifies everything works. No more hand-holding every session.

/vault gives you control over the whole credential store:

/vault list              # What do I have?
/vault add github        # Set up something new
/vault check github      # Are the keys there?
/vault setup             # Start fresh

And there is a background skill that gives Claude passive knowledge about the vault. So even if you do not explicitly call /cli-onboard, Claude knows where to look for credentials. It just figures it out.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Install a Docker skill from ClawHub. Ask Claude to build a container. Claude sees the skill, realizes docker CLI is needed, onboards it, done. Two minutes, never think about it again.

Install a Kubernetes skill. Say "deploy this to staging". Claude installs kubectl, asks for the kubeconfig, stores it, verifies the cluster, runs the deployment. One conversation. Credentials persist forever.

This is what it should have been like from the start.

The Vault Is Just Files

Nothing fancy. No encrypted database. No daemon running in the background. Just flat files on disk. You can use it without Claude:

# All keys for a service
~/.config/secrets/get-secret.sh github

# One specific key
~/.config/secrets/get-secret.sh github GITHUB_TOKEN

# Load as env vars
eval $(~/.config/secrets/get-secret.sh --load github)

I use this in shell scripts, random terminal commands, everywhere. Same vault I use for my entire SaaS infrastructure. It is not an agent thing. It is just a sane way to keep API keys that anything can read.

My Claude Code Setup

Claude Code (base)
├── ClawHub CLI          - skill discovery and install
├── cli-vault plugin     - CLI onboarding + credential vault
├── 12 custom skills     - Kotlin, Keycloak, Coolify, Remotion...
├── 3 custom agents      - code reviewer, architecture planner, backend dev
└── MCP servers          - Slack, Chrome, Playwright, Atlassian, Firecrawl

The Rabbit Hole I Almost Fell Into

I am going to be honest. Before landing on this simple setup, I almost went full overengineering mode. I looked at claude-code-router (29.7k stars) for multi-model routing. CCPI for a full package manager. buildwithclaude which indexes 20k+ plugins. PolySkill with security scanning.

I was about to build a custom wrapper CLI, a model router, a session persistence layer, AND a skill registry. All at once. Classic developer brain: the problem is simple but let me make it complicated because it feels more legitimate that way.

Then I stopped. What do I actually need? Skills from ClawHub. A way to handle CLI tools. A place for API keys. One env var, one plugin. Done.

The best code is the code you do not write.

Why This Matters

Every AI tool has its own plugin system right now. OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Windsurf. But here is the thing: they are all quietly converging on the same SKILL.md format. The Agent Skills standard is becoming the lingua franca of AI agent skills.

So stop thinking in terms of ecosystems. Use Claude Code because it is the best coding agent. Grab skills from ClawHub because they have the biggest catalog. The formats are already compatible. No bridge, no wrapper, no abstraction layer. Just point the install directory at the right place.

Try It

Plugin is open source: github.com/ercan2158/cli-vault

/plugin marketplace add ercan2158/cli-vault

If you are tired of Claude asking where your API keys are every session, or you want access to 3,000+ ClawHub skills without leaving Claude Code, this will save you some headaches.