Setup & Installation
Or with the ClawHub CLI, for registry-managed skill folders outside a full OpenClaw workspace:
Version History
- No code or documentation changes detected in this version. - This release maintains all previous functionality and instructions.
What This Skill Does
FreeRide configures OpenClaw to use free AI models from OpenRouter. It ranks available models by quality, sets the best as primary, and adds ranked fallbacks so rate limits don't interrupt work. Config changes are applied by restarting the OpenClaw gateway.
Automates free model selection and fallback configuration instead of manually editing openclaw.json and handling rate limit errors by hand.
When to use it
- Switching from paid AI models to free alternatives to cut costs
- Setting up automatic model fallbacks before a long coding session
- Rotating to a different free model when hitting rate limits
- Checking which free models are currently available on OpenRouter
- Keeping existing OpenClaw config while adding free model support
Example Workflow
Here's how your AI assistant might use this skill in practice.
User asks: Set up free AI models for my OpenClaw
- 1Check that OPENROUTER_API_KEY is set in the environment
- 2Run `freeride auto` to rank free models and write primary and fallback config to openclaw.json
- 3Run `openclaw gateway restart` to apply the new config
- 4Tell user to send `/status` to confirm the active model
OpenClaw is now using the top-ranked free model as primary with 5 ranked fallbacks configured
Requirements
Accounts, API keys, or tools you or your AI assistant may need to set up while using this skill.