dropbox-lite

What This Skill Does

The dropbox-lite skill for OpenClaw is a powerful utility designed to bridge the gap between your local environment and your cloud storage. It allows users to perform standard file operations—such as listing directories, searching for specific documents, uploading new assets, and downloading existing files—directly from the OpenClaw terminal interface. The standout feature of this skill is its robust handling of Dropbox's OAuth2 authentication flow. By managing the token refresh lifecycle automatically, the skill eliminates the need for manual re-authentication every four hours, ensuring that your automated workflows remain uninterrupted. It effectively manages access by updating the stored local environment variables whenever a short-lived token expires, keeping your sessions secure and persistent.

Installation

To begin, ensure you have the OpenClaw environment active. Install the skill using the command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/thekie/dropbox-lite. After installation, you must configure your environment. Navigate to ~/.config/atlas/ and create a dropbox.env file. Populate this file with your DROPBOX_APP_KEY, DROPBOX_APP_SECRET, and the DROPBOX_REFRESH_TOKEN obtained through the Dropbox Developer Console. If you have an existing access token, you can add it, but the skill is designed to handle this field dynamically if it is missing or expired.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for developers, researchers, and productivity-focused users who store their data in Dropbox. Common scenarios include:

• Automating daily backups of local configuration files or project directories to cloud storage.
• Quickly fetching specific project documentation or datasets stored in Dropbox to your local environment for analysis.
• Searching for archived documents across nested cloud folders using terminal-based natural language queries.
• Integrating Dropbox file retrieval into larger, multi-step agent workflows where source materials are stored in the cloud.

Example Prompts

1. "List all files in my 'Projects' folder on Dropbox and tell me which ones were last updated this week."
2. "Download the latest report titled 'Q4_Financials.pdf' from the root of my Dropbox into the current directory."
3. "Search for any files containing the keyword 'Architecture' in their filename and upload a copy of 'summary.txt' to that same folder."

Tips & Limitations

To ensure optimal performance, verify that your Dropbox App permissions include files.metadata.write and files.content.write for upload functionality; otherwise, the skill will fail with a 403 error. While the refresh token is long-lived, please remember that it is highly sensitive; treat your dropbox.env file as you would a private key. The primary limitation is the initial setup; you must complete the OAuth flow (authorization code exchange) correctly to receive a 'refresh token' rather than a standard access token, or the skill will not be able to maintain persistent connectivity.