bitwarden

What This Skill Does

The Bitwarden CLI (bw) skill empowers you to securely manage and access your Bitwarden vault directly from your command line. This allows for programmatic retrieval of passwords, secure notes, and other sensitive information, making it invaluable for automation, scripting, and secure secret management within your workflows. It supports multiple authentication methods, including email/password, API key, and SSO, ensuring flexibility for different user needs and organizational setups.

CRITICAL NOTE: This skill mandates the use of a tmux session for all bw operations. The tmux session is essential for maintaining the BW_SESSION environment variable, which is required for authenticated access to your vault after initial login or unlock. Without a persistent tmux session, your vault will lock, and commands will fail.

Installation

To install the Bitwarden CLI skill, use the following command:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/startupbros/bw-vault

This command will download and set up the necessary components for the bitwarden skill, making it available for use within OpenClaw.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for a variety of scenarios:

• Automated Deployments: Fetching API keys, database credentials, or other secrets needed for deploying applications.
• Scripting Secure Access: Integrating with custom scripts to retrieve login information for websites or services without hardcoding credentials.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Securely injecting secrets into build and deployment pipelines.
• Password Rotation: Automating the process of updating passwords in your vault and associated services.
• Managing Secure Notes: Programmatically accessing and updating important secure notes.

Example Prompts

• "Open a tmux session and log into my Bitwarden vault using my email and password."
• "Get the password for my 'AWS Production' account and then list all items in my vault that contain 'database'."
• "Unlock my Bitwarden vault using my API key, get the TOTP code for 'My Bank', and then lock the vault."

Tips & Limitations

• Tmux is Mandatory: Always ensure you are operating within a tmux session. If tmux is not available, do not proceed with using this skill and seek assistance.
• Session Management: After logging in or unlocking, the BW_SESSION environment variable is crucial. It should be exported correctly. The skill attempts to manage this, but manual intervention might be needed if errors occur.
• Security First: NEVER log sensitive information in plain text. Avoid writing secrets to disk unless absolutely unavoidable. Always use bw lock when finished.
• Error Handling: If you encounter "Vault is locked" errors, re-authenticate with bw unlock. If you see "You are not logged in" errors, use bw login.
• Secret Retrieval: You can retrieve specific fields (like passwords, usernames, TOTP codes) or the entire item as JSON for more granular control. The jq tool is useful for parsing JSON output.
• Authentication: The skill supports email/password, API key, and SSO. API key and SSO methods require an explicit bw unlock after login to make the vault data accessible.