A bridge skill enabling text-only AI models to analyze, OCR, and extract details from images via OpenAI or Anthropic protocols.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install multimodal-image-understanding
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 multimodal-image-understanding 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 Multimodal Image Understanding Skill?
The Multimodal Image Understanding skill acts as an intelligent intermediary for AI coding agents and text-only Large Language Models, such as DeepSeek-v4 or GLM 5.1. When an agent experiences an image-related task but cannot process images natively, this tool seamlessly steps in to route the visual inputs to an upstream multimodal-capable vision model. This capability is a critical enhancement within the Openclaw Skills ecosystem, keeping complex workflows intact without requiring a complete model switch.
By supporting both Anthropic and OpenAI protocols, the skill converts local image files or remote URLs into detailed textual insights. Developers can keep their primary developer agents lightweight, using this BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) vision adapter to solve image descriptions, structural extractions, and OCR challenges on demand.
Multimodal Image Understanding Skill Use Cases
- Processing image analysis, OCR, or text extraction requests when using text-only models like DeepSeek-v4.
- Fulfilling explicit requests where a user specifies to "use my visual model" or run image analysis via a dedicated multimodal API.
- Direct orchestration of vision tasks inside agent chains using the
/multimodal-image-understandingcommand.
How Multimodal Image Understanding Skill Works
- Resolves and reads user credentials and routing options from the default configuration file (
~/.config/multimodal-image-understanding/config.json). - Parses the target gateway protocol based on the configuration fields (
openaioranthropic). - Triggers the runner script
scripts/multimodal_understand.py, loading local paths as base64 or fetching remote image URLs. - Dispatches the prompt and image payload securely to the designated upstream vision API.
- Echoes the model's textual description or analysis directly to standard output (stdout) for consumption.
Multimodal Image Understanding Skill Setup
Setup Configuration
Create the configuration directory and copy the default template payload:
mkdir -p ~/.config/multimodal-image-understanding
cp assets/config.example.json ~/.config/multimodal-image-understanding/config.json
Edit Configuration
Configure your model specifications in ~/.config/multimodal-image-understanding/config.json. Below is an example using the OpenAI protocol:
{
"protocol": "openai",
"endpoint": "https://api.openai.com/v1",
"model": "gpt-4o",
"api_key": "${OPENAI_API_KEY}",
"max_tokens": 1024,
"temperature": 0.2
}
Running the Skill
Provide an image and request analysis directly via the CLI:
python3 scripts/multimodal_understand.py \
--image /path/to/photo.jpg \
--prompt "Provide a detailed transcription of all handwritten text in this image."
Multimodal Image Understanding Skill Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill manages its orchestration properties through a structured configuration schema. Here is the metadata taxonomy:
| Parameter | Type | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|---|
protocol |
String | Gateway interface protocol: openai or anthropic |
Yes |
endpoint |
String | Upstream server address. Supports environment variables | Yes |
model |
String | Model ID (e.g., gpt-4o, claude-3-5-sonnet) |
Yes |
api_key |
String | Secret key. Supports ${ENV_VAR_NAME} pattern |
Yes |
max_tokens |
Integer | Limits output response size | No |
image_mode |
String | Set to base64 to force local download & encoding of remote URLs |
No |
Ensure local configuration files are locked down using standard filesystem permissions:
chmod 600 ~/.config/multimodal-image-understanding/config.json
Multimodal Image Understanding Skill Advanced Features
- Environment Variable Support: Automatically evaluates and interpolates environment variables like
${MY_API_KEY}within JSON values to prevent API key leaks. - Flexible Image Inputs: Accepts local directory paths, base64 data, and standard remote HTTP(S) image URLs natively.
- Multiple Protocol Handlers: Built-in support for OpenAI Chat Completions formats and Anthropic Messages protocols.
- Quiet Execution Chaining: Supports the
--quietflag to suppress diagnostics from stderr, sending only the model response to stdout for pipeline processing.
SKILL.md
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