OpenClaw Claude Extension Updated to Use Agent SDK After Anthropic Billing Changes
The developer of an OpenClaw extension for Claude has rewritten their implementation to use Anthropic's official claude-agent-sdk after encountering billing issues with the previous CLI-based approach.
What Changed
Anthropic started detecting the Claude CLI's -p (print/headless) mode server-side and reclassifying it as "third-party app usage." This caused usage to bill against a separate extra usage credit pool instead of users' Max plan limits, with users receiving messages about claiming $200 credits.
Failed Workarounds
- PTY-based spawning so the CLI sees a real terminal — didn't help because detection is server-side metadata
- Full interactive mode without
-p— the Ink TUI swallows programmatic input and output is unparseable (ANSI codes, spinners, words with no spaces) - Session reuse, request jitter, stdin piping — all cosmetic changes that don't affect what the CLI reports upstream
The Solution
The developer switched to the claude-agent-sdk after discovering that Nanoclaw (26k stars) uses this approach without billing issues. The SDK provides the same full Claude Code experience — tool use, file editing, multi-step reasoning, MCP servers, memory — but as a Node.js library instead of a subprocess.
The SDK authenticates through existing Claude Code login, so it bills as regular Max plan usage rather than third-party usage. The architecture remains similar: OpenClaw gateway receives requests, hands them to the extension, which calls query() from the SDK, parses streaming messages, and translates them back to OpenAI-compatible SSE.
Installation
git clone https://github.com/siimvene/openclaw-claude-runner.git
cd openclaw-claude-runner
bash install.sh
claude login
openclaw gateway restartCompatibility
Works with Opus 4.6, Opus 4.5, Sonnet 4.6, Sonnet 4, Haiku 4.5 — whatever the SDK supports. The developer also rewrote the Codex runner using OpenAI's codex-sdk for the OpenAI side.
This approach maintains the same functionality while avoiding the billing classification issues that affected the CLI-based implementation.
📖 Read the full source: r/openclaw
👀 See Also
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