Viam Cli

What This Skill Does

The Viam CLI skill by hexbabe provides a comprehensive interface for managing the Viam robotics platform directly within your OpenClaw environment. It streamlines the lifecycle of robotics projects by enabling developers to handle fleet management, authentication, and remote resource interaction without leaving their terminal-centric workflow. The skill acts as an abstraction layer over the official Viam CLI, allowing the AI to safely manage organizations, locations, machines, and logging with built-in guardrails for security and destructive operation prevention. Whether you are deploying new code, fetching logs from remote sensors, or auditing your organizational hierarchy, this skill simplifies complex CLI sequences into natural language interactions.

Installation

Installation is managed through the OpenClaw repository system. To add this to your environment, execute clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/hexbabe/viam-cli. Upon first use, the skill will automatically check for the presence of the viam binary on your system. If the binary is missing, the skill will prompt you for permission to execute the necessary Homebrew installation commands (brew tap viamrobotics/brews followed by brew install viam). Once installed, users must run viam login to establish their session.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for robotics engineers and developers working in distributed systems. Primary use cases include listing and managing fleets across multiple organizations, performing remote diagnostics by streaming logs directly into the chat interface, and managing API keys for machine parts. It is particularly useful for teams that need to perform quick administrative tasks, such as verifying which machines are currently online or auditing machine access, without needing to open the web dashboard. The file transfer capabilities also enable quick synchronization of configuration files to edge devices.

Example Prompts

1. "List all the machines currently running in my production organization and check if any of them have active error logs."
2. "Can you help me retrieve the logs for my rover named 'mar-v-01' so I can debug the recent motion planning issue?"
3. "I need to generate a new API key for the robot arm in the lab; please walk me through the command to create one for that specific machine part."

Tips & Limitations

Always follow the read-first approach; inquire about existing resources before attempting to modify them. The skill is designed with a safety-first methodology, meaning destructive commands like deletion require explicit user confirmation. It does not store credentials; it relies strictly on your existing authenticated Viam CLI session. If you encounter issues, ensure your system PATH includes the directory where the Viam binary resides after Homebrew installation.