A secure bridge allowing remote AI agents to read, search, and append to Markdown notes on your local computer via an SSH tunnel.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install headless-vault-cli
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install headless-vault-cli using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is Headless Vault CLI?
Headless Vault CLI is a powerful integration designed for Openclaw Skills that enables a remote AI agent to interact with your personal knowledge base stored on a local macOS or Linux machine. By utilizing a reverse SSH tunnel and a dedicated local utility called vaultctl, this skill allows the agent to navigate your directory structure, retrieve note content, and create or append to files without ever needing a direct interactive shell.
This architecture is built for users who prioritize data sovereignty but want the convenience of AI-driven automation. It allows you to keep your primary notes local while granting a VPS-hosted bot restricted, safe access to specific folders. This is a core component of building a private, multi-device workflow within the Openclaw Skills framework.
Headless Vault CLI Use Cases
- Accessing and searching your Obsidian or Foam vault from a remote AI assistant.
- Automatically appending web research or summaries to local project notes.
- Remotely creating daily logs or meeting notes that sync immediately to your local file system.
- Retrieving specific context from local Markdown files to inform AI-generated content.
How Headless Vault CLI Works
- A reverse SSH tunnel is established from your local machine to the VPS, mapping a local port to the remote environment.
- The AI agent triggers the skill, which connects back to the local machine using the established tunnel.
- Commands are passed through a forced-command wrapper on the local machine, ensuring only the vaultctl utility can be executed.
- All file paths and contents are Base64 encoded during transit to prevent shell injection and handle special characters.
- The local utility validates that all requested operations stay within the designated vault root before returning JSON-formatted data to the agent.
Headless Vault CLI Setup
To use this with your Openclaw Skills configuration, follow these steps:
- Install vaultctl on your local machine and set your vault root.
- Configure your local
~/.ssh/authorized_keyswith the forced-command restriction:
command="/usr/local/bin/vaultctl-wrapper",no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding ssh-ed25519 YOUR_VPS_PUBLIC_KEY
- Start the reverse tunnel from your local machine:
ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 user@your-vps-ip
- Set the required environment variable on the VPS:
export VAULT_SSH_USER="your_local_username"
Headless Vault CLI Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill interacts with Markdown files and returns structured JSON metadata. Use the following schema for understanding the output:
| Attribute | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| tree | Array | A list of files and directories with their relative paths. |
| content | String | The raw Markdown text of a specific file. |
| metadata | Object | Includes file size (bytes), line count, sha256 hash, and mtime. |
| status | String | Execution result, typically 'ok' or an error message. |
Headless Vault CLI Advanced Features
- Forced-command restriction ensures the VPS can never execute arbitrary shell commands like rm or curl.
- Path traversal protection prevents access to files outside the defined vault directory.
- Base64 encoding for all inputs ensures reliability when handling complex Markdown syntax or file names with spaces.
- Non-destructive write operations support creating new notes or appending to existing ones without the risk of accidental overwrites.
SKILL.md
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