ipfs-client

What This Skill Does

The ipfs-client skill enables your OpenClaw agent to interact with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) in a strictly read-only capacity. It is designed for seamless data retrieval, allowing you to fetch files, explore complex DAG structures, and resolve IPNS names without the risk of accidentally pinning data or modifying the network state. By leveraging both local IPFS nodes (via the CLI) and public HTTP gateways, this skill ensures that your agent remains versatile in environments where a local daemon might not be running. It functions as a powerful, safety-first investigator for decentralized web content, metadata, and immutable data links.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/apexfork/ipfs-client

Once installed, the agent will automatically detect if a local IPFS daemon is present via command -v ipfs. If detected, it prioritizes the CLI for high-performance operations; if unavailable, it gracefully falls back to curl requests targeting public gateways like ipfs.io, cloudflare-ipfs.com, or dweb.link.

Use Cases

• Decentralized Research: Fetching scientific papers or datasets stored on IPFS using their immutable CID links.
• Content Verification: Verifying the integrity of data blocks by comparing local hash outputs with network CIDs.
• IPNS Monitoring: Resolving human-readable IPNS paths to their latest content pointers.
• DAG Exploration: Traversing directory structures and nested links to understand the hierarchy of decentralized storage architectures.

Example Prompts

1. "Fetch the file content from this IPFS hash: QmYwAPJzv5CZsnAzt8auVZcgSDUbkXz2x4k2k5xmj8W1gR and display the text."
2. "Can you resolve the IPNS name /ipns/docs.ipfs.tech and tell me the current CID it points to?"
3. "List all the files and metadata contained within this directory hash: QmHash_Example."

Tips & Limitations

• Safety: This skill is strictly read-only. It cannot publish content to the network or pin data to your storage. Your local environment remains untouched.
• Performance: Public gateways are subject to rate limits. For frequent or intensive operations, ensure you are running a local IPFS daemon for optimal speed and reliability.
• Privacy: While retrieving data is anonymous via gateways, remember that requesting specific CIDs reveals that your IP address is accessing that specific piece of content.