frigate

What This Skill Does

The Frigate NVR skill provides OpenClaw with native, authenticated access to your local Frigate Network Video Recorder. It enables your AI agent to interact with security camera feeds, manage snapshots, and monitor motion events. Unlike basic integrations, this skill handles the specific session-based authentication required by Frigate version 0.16+, ensuring your agent can securely log into your server and perform real-time administrative and monitoring tasks. It includes a comprehensive CLI helper script that simplifies the retrieval of camera configurations, high-resolution snapshots, and RTSP stream metadata, making it a robust interface for smart home automation.

Installation

To integrate this skill, ensure your OpenClaw environment is configured with the necessary credentials. Install the skill using the following command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/porygonthebot/frigate

Once installed, you must configure the following environment variables on your system to allow the agent to connect to your NVR:

• FRIGATE_URL: The full URL to your Frigate server (e.g., https://192.168.1.50:8971).
• FRIGATE_USER: Your designated Frigate username.
• FRIGATE_PASS: Your secure password for that user.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for home security automation and intelligent monitoring. Typical use cases include:

• Proactive security: Automatically detecting a person at the front door and grabbing a snapshot to send to a connected messaging service like Telegram or Slack.
• Event auditing: Reviewing motion events for specific cameras during a defined time window to summarize daily activity.
• Stream management: Automatically providing users with deep links or RTSP stream strings for external viewing apps or dashboards.
• Incident response: Providing immediate visual confirmation of events triggered by other home automation sensors.

Example Prompts

1. "Check the latest snapshot from the doorbell camera and send it to my Telegram account."
2. "List all motion events for the garage camera that occurred in the last hour."
3. "Can you provide the direct stream URL for the driveway camera so I can view it on my laptop?"

Tips & Limitations

• Network Security: Since most NVR setups use self-signed certificates, the integration defaults to verify=False for HTTPS connections. Ensure your internal network is secured.
• Session Expiry: The authentication token generated via /api/login typically expires in 24 hours. The skill handles re-authentication sessions gracefully, but avoid hard-coding tokens.
• API Limitations: Always target the /api/config endpoint for device metadata, as /api/cameras is not supported. Ensure your Frigate instance is running version 0.16+ to maintain compatibility with the session-based authentication model used by this script.