Passkey

What This Skill Does

The Passkey skill for OpenClaw provides a robust framework for implementing WebAuthn-based passwordless authentication. Passkeys offer a significant security upgrade over traditional passwords by utilizing public-key cryptography to prevent phishing and credential stuffing. This skill acts as a technical advisor and integration guide, ensuring that developers avoid common security traps such as improper challenge handling, origin validation omissions, and incorrect credential storage. By standardizing the interaction between the client-side browser API and server-side verification, it helps developers build compliant, secure, and user-friendly authentication flows that adhere to FIDO2 standards.

Installation

To install this skill, run the following command in your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/ivangdavila/passkey

Use Cases

• Secure User Registration: Implementing biometric or hardware-backed registration for high-security applications.
• Passwordless Login Flows: Transitioning legacy applications to a modern, user-friendly authentication system.
• Multi-device Authentication: Handling cross-device flows (e.g., scanning a QR code on a PC using a mobile phone's security chip).
• Compliance Auditing: Ensuring your WebAuthn implementation adheres to strict security standards like requiring unique challenges and proper sign-count verification.

Example Prompts

1. "OpenClaw, generate a server-side verification snippet for a WebAuthn registration ceremony using the py_webauthn library."
2. "Can you help me debug a WebAuthn issue where my challenge verification fails during cross-device authentication?"
3. "What are the best practices for handling user account recovery when a user loses their primary hardware security key?"

Tips & Limitations

• Security First: Always use battle-tested libraries like SimpleWebAuthn, py_webauthn, or webauthn-rs. Never write your own CBOR parser or cryptographic logic from scratch.
• User Experience: Always provide a password fallback, as not every user has a passkey-capable device. Use mediation: "conditional" to provide a seamless autocompletion experience in the username field.
• Compatibility: Be aware of sync behaviors across platforms. iCloud Keychain, Google Password Manager, and Windows Hello behave differently. Relying on platform-specific keys may cause friction for multi-device users.
• Testing: Utilize the Chrome DevTools 'WebAuthn' tab to simulate authenticators and ensure your server-side logic handles both resident and non-resident credential flows correctly. Never ignore the sign count; it is your primary defense against cloned authenticators.