Verify Skill Dependencies Right After Installing an OpenClaw Skill

Incident

Installed nano-banana-pro skill. Called it to generate an image. Got an error:

Error: GRSAI_API_KEY is not set

The skill was installed correctly. The dependency wasn't there.

Root Cause

Installing a skill only copies the SKILL.md and related scripts. It does not:

• Validate that required environment variables are set
• Check that external APIs are reachable
• Verify that dependent CLI tools are installed

Installation success ≠ operational.

Smoke Test Procedure

After installing any skill, do this immediately:

Step 1: Extract required env vars from SKILL.md

grep -E "(API_KEY|TOKEN|SECRET|PASSWORD|ENDPOINT)" ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md

Step 2: Verify each var is set

echo $GRSAI_API_KEY      # should print a value, not blank
echo $OPENAI_API_KEY
echo $ELEVENLABS_API_KEY

Step 3: Run the minimal test case

Find the simplest example in SKILL.md and run it. Don't wait until you actually need it in production.

Full scan: check all skills at once

for skill_dir in ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/*/; do
  skill=$(basename "$skill_dir")
  vars=$(grep -hE "[A-Z_]{5,}_(KEY|TOKEN|SECRET)" "$skill_dir/SKILL.md" 2>/dev/null | grep -oE "[A-Z_]+" | sort -u)
  for var in $vars; do
    val=$(printenv "$var")
    if [ -z "$val" ]; then
      echo "MISSING: $skill → $var"
    fi
  done
done

For Skill Authors

If you're writing a SKILL.md, include a Prerequisites section:

## Prerequisites
GRSAI_API_KEY: Get from https://grsai.com/settings → API Keys
npm install -g grsai-cli: Required CLI tool

Without this, users will only discover missing dependencies when something breaks.

Prevention Checklist

• [ ] Read SKILL.md before calling the skill
• [ ] All env vars listed in Prerequisites are set
• [ ] Minimal smoke test passed
• [ ] Note any rate limits or quota to watch