Switching from DeepSeek exposed an Anthropic workspace-key error

Troubleshooting
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1

Adapted community discussion: Paraphrased and condensed from an anonymized public OpenClaw Discord support conversation from September 2026. Technical guidance was reviewed for OpenClaw 2026.9.3.

My DeepSeek route timed out, so I added an Anthropic key. OpenClaw still will not answer, and the session appears stuck on the old provider.

2

Credentials do not cross provider boundaries. An Anthropic key cannot authenticate a session that is still pinned to a DeepSeek model.

In the terminal, inspect the available routes and set an exact Anthropic model returned by the list:

openclaw models status
openclaw models list --provider anthropic
openclaw models set anthropic/EXACT_MODEL_ID

Then use /model default -s or /model anthropic/EXACT_MODEL_ID -s inside the OpenClaw conversation, not in Bash.

3

The request now reaches a provider, but the agent still fails before replying. The UI says the provider rejected the request schema or tool payload.

4

That is a new stage of the problem. Update OpenClaw first, start a fresh session, and inspect one failure with openclaw logs --follow. Share only the HTTP status and sanitized provider error.

For a one-shot provider check on current OpenClaw, use:

openclaw infer model run \
  --local \
  --model anthropic/EXACT_MODEL_ID \
  --prompt "hello" \
  --json

This makes a real provider request, so it may consume quota.

5

The one-shot request reached Anthropic and returned HTTP 400. The sanitized error says the credential is identity-linked and requires an Anthropic workspace identifier.

6

That identifies the cause. The key is present, but this credential type expects provider-specific workspace context. OpenClaw 2026.9.3 does not expose a documented configuration field for supplying an Anthropic workspace identifier, so do not guess at one. The supported alternative is a regular Anthropic workspace API key saved through the interactive login flow:

openclaw models auth login \
  --provider anthropic \
  --method api-key \
  --set-default
openclaw gateway restart

Enter the key only at the local protected prompt. If you must keep the identity-linked credential, stop here and follow current Anthropic and OpenClaw provider guidance rather than inventing a local workspace setting.