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To connect the Bluehost Unmanaged VPS OpenClaw application to Bluehost AI Credits, add your API key to the service environment, use it to retrieve the gateway’s current model list, configure the bluehost-ai-credits provider with a SecretRef, select a model from that list, and restart OpenClaw. The steps below follow Bluehost’s application-specific guide for OpenClaw 2026.8.2 (0965053); they are not a universal setup for self-installed OpenClaw.

Before you start

You need root SSH access to the Bluehost Unmanaged VPS OpenClaw application and a Bluehost AI Credits API key. This managed application’s guide assumes an openclaw systemd service that reads /etc/default/openclaw through an EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/openclaw directive. If you installed OpenClaw yourself rather than using Bluehost’s application, follow Bluehost’s separate general OpenClaw guide instead. The application-specific instructions are documented for version 2026.8.2 (0965053), and Bluehost cautions that rapid software changes can require revisions. Bluehost’s Unmanaged VPS guide

Put the API key where both setup and the service can use it

The documented flow makes the same key available in two places: the service environment file for OpenClaw at runtime, and the shell environment used to request the model list. Replace YOUR_KEY_HERE with your actual AI Credits key; do not include the placeholder literally.

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  1. As root, append the key to /etc/default/openclaw as BLUEHOST_AI_CREDITS_KEY=YOUR_KEY_HERE. Keep the file readable only by administrators because it contains a credential.

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  2. Export that same key in the setup shell, for example: export BLUEHOST_AI_CREDITS_KEY='YOUR_ACTUAL_KEY'. This shell export is needed for the model-fetch request; placing the key only in the service environment file does not automatically make it available to a separate SSH shell.

  3. Restart the service so it loads the updated environment file: systemctl restart openclaw.

Avoid pasting the key into shared logs, screenshots, or support messages. The setup guide requires the key in both contexts, but the values should remain private.

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Fetch the gateway’s current models and add chat models

Request the authorized model list from https://gateway.ai.bluehost.com/v1/models using the key as a bearer token. The endpoint is OpenAI-compatible. The application guide’s setup flow loads chat-capable results into OpenClaw’s bluehost-ai-credits provider and uses the openai-completions API setting.

Use the model-fetch procedure in Bluehost’s application-specific guide rather than hard-coding a presumed list of model IDs: the gateway’s available models can change. Filter for chat-capable models and add those entries to the provider configuration. A model appearing in the returned list does not by itself establish that it is ready to use.

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Attach the key as a SecretRef and choose a default

Configure the provider credential through OpenClaw’s SecretRef mechanism, using the environment variable source and the environment variable ID:

openclaw config set ... --ref-provider default --ref-source env --ref-id BLUEHOST_AI_CREDITS_KEY

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The ellipsis represents the provider credential setting path used in Bluehost’s OpenClaw configuration procedure; use that exact setting path from the application guide. Do not enter the literal text env:BLUEHOST_AI_CREDITS_KEY as the provider’s key value. That text is not resolved as a variable reference: the gateway receives it as the token and rejects the request with HTTP 401.

Set OpenClaw’s default to an exact model ID that appears in the current gateway model list, with the provider prefix. Bluehost’s unmanaged application guide gives bluehost-ai-credits/claude-haiku-4-5 as an example. Treat it as an example, not a guarantee that the model is currently available or usable on your account.

Restart and check the configuration

After changing the provider, SecretRef, and default model, restart the service again so the running application applies the configuration:

systemctl restart openclaw

Read the configured provider models back with the documented openclaw config get command and confirm the expected chat models are present. The model dropdown should also show the configured models. For an end-to-end check, send a short test message and confirm the status line identifies the configured custom provider and model. Bluehost’s general OpenClaw guide describes this test-message check.

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Refresh the model list when gateway availability changes

If Bluehost adds models to the gateway, repeat the model-fetch step and merge the refreshed list into the existing provider configuration. The unmanaged guide says this merge preserves manually added models. Verify the resulting IDs and set a new default only if you want to change which model OpenClaw uses.

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