openclaw/docs/providers/google.md

title, summary, read_when

title	summary	read_when
Google (Gemini)	Google Gemini setup (API key + OAuth, image generation, media understanding, web search)	You want to use Google Gemini models with OpenClaw You need the API key or OAuth auth flow

Google (Gemini)

The Google plugin provides access to Gemini models through Google AI Studio, plus image generation, media understanding (image/audio/video), and web search via Gemini Grounding.

• Provider: google
• Auth: GEMINI_API_KEY or GOOGLE_API_KEY
• API: Google Gemini API
• Alternative provider: google-gemini-cli (OAuth)

Quick start

1. Set the API key:

openclaw onboard --auth-choice gemini-api-key

2. Set a default model:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview" },
    },
  },
}

Non-interactive example

openclaw onboard --non-interactive \
  --mode local \
  --auth-choice gemini-api-key \
  --gemini-api-key "$GEMINI_API_KEY"

OAuth (Gemini CLI)

An alternative provider google-gemini-cli uses PKCE OAuth instead of an API key. This is an unofficial integration; some users report account restrictions. Use at your own risk.

• Default model: google-gemini-cli/gemini-3.1-pro-preview
• Alias: gemini-cli
• Install prerequisite: local Gemini CLI available as gemini
  • Homebrew: brew install gemini-cli
  • npm: npm install -g @google/gemini-cli
• Login:

openclaw models auth login --provider google-gemini-cli --set-default

Environment variables:

• OPENCLAW_GEMINI_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID
• OPENCLAW_GEMINI_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET

(Or the GEMINI_CLI_* variants.)

If Gemini CLI OAuth requests fail after login, set GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT or GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT_ID on the gateway host and retry.

If login fails before the browser flow starts, make sure the local gemini command is installed and on PATH. OpenClaw supports both Homebrew installs and global npm installs, including common Windows/npm layouts.

Gemini CLI JSON usage notes:

• Reply text comes from the CLI JSON response field.
• Usage falls back to stats when the CLI leaves usage empty.
• stats.cached is normalized into OpenClaw cacheRead.
• If stats.input is missing, OpenClaw derives input tokens from stats.input_tokens - stats.cached.

Capabilities

Capability	Supported
Chat completions	Yes
Image generation	Yes
Image understanding	Yes
Audio transcription	Yes
Video understanding	Yes
Web search (Grounding)	Yes
Thinking/reasoning	Yes (Gemini 3.1+)

Direct Gemini cache reuse

For direct Gemini API runs (api: "google-generative-ai"), OpenClaw now passes a configured cachedContent handle through to Gemini requests.

• Configure per-model or global params with either cachedContent or legacy cached_content
• If both are present, cachedContent wins
• Example value: cachedContents/prebuilt-context
• Gemini cache-hit usage is normalized into OpenClaw cacheRead from upstream cachedContentTokenCount

Example:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      models: {
        "google/gemini-2.5-pro": {
          params: {
            cachedContent: "cachedContents/prebuilt-context",
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Image generation

The bundled google image-generation provider defaults to google/gemini-3.1-flash-image-preview.

• Also supports google/gemini-3-pro-image-preview
• Generate: up to 4 images per request
• Edit mode: enabled, up to 5 input images
• Geometry controls: size, aspectRatio, and resolution

The OAuth-only google-gemini-cli provider is a separate text-inference surface. Image generation, media understanding, and Gemini Grounding stay on the google provider id.

Environment note

If the Gateway runs as a daemon (launchd/systemd), make sure GEMINI_API_KEY is available to that process (for example, in ~/.openclaw/.env or via env.shellEnv).