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Z.AI is the API platform for GLM models. It provides REST APIs for GLM and uses API keys for authentication. Create your API key in the Z.AI console. OpenClaw uses the zai provider with a Z.AI API key.

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GLM models

GLM is a model family, not a separate provider. In OpenClaw, GLM models use refs such as zai/glm-5.2: provider zai, model id glm-5.2.

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Getting started

Install the provider plugin first:
Best for: most users. OpenClaw probes supported Z.AI endpoints with your API key and applies the correct base URL automatically.
1

Run onboarding

2

Verify the model is listed

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Endpoints

zai-api-key auto-detects one of these four by probing your key against each endpoint’s chat-completions API, checking general endpoints (zai-global, then zai-cn) before Coding Plan endpoints (zai-coding-global, then zai-coding-cn), and stopping at the first endpoint that accepts a request. Use an explicit --auth-choice to force a Coding Plan endpoint if your key works on both.

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Rate limits and overloads

Z.AI documents the Coding Plan and general-purpose agent tools as capacity managed services. In Z.AI’s own docs:
  • General-purpose agent tools, including OpenClaw, are served on a best-effort basis. During high inference load, typically around 2-6 PM Singapore time, some requests may face temporary rate limits.
  • Coding Plan rate and concurrency limits are tied to the plan tier and can be adjusted dynamically based on resource availability. Off-peak hours may have higher concurrency.
  • API error code 1302 means “Rate limit reached for requests”. API error code 1305 means “The service may be temporarily overloaded, please try again later”.
If you see a temporary 429 or 1305 response during a busy period, wait and retry the request. If failures are repeatable outside peak periods, or only occur for one endpoint, model, or request shape, check the configured endpoint and model first:
Coding Plan keys should use a Coding Plan endpoint such as https://api.z.ai/api/coding/paas/v4; general API keys should use a general API endpoint such as https://api.z.ai/api/paas/v4. Persistent failures with the same key and endpoint can indicate a provider-side rejection or plan limitation, not ordinary peak-load throttling.

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Config example

zai-api-key lets OpenClaw detect the matching Z.AI endpoint from the key and apply the correct base URL automatically. Use the explicit regional choices when you want to force a specific Coding Plan or general API surface.

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Built-in catalog

The zai provider plugin ships its catalog in the plugin manifest, so read-only listing can show known GLM rows without loading provider runtime:
The manifest-backed catalog currently includes:
GLM models are available as zai/<model> (example: zai/glm-5).
Coding Plan setup defaults to zai/glm-5.2; general API setup keeps zai/glm-5.1. On the Coding Plan endpoints, auto-detection falls back to glm-5.1 and then glm-4.7 when the key/plan does not expose GLM-5.2. GLM versions and availability can change; run openclaw models list --all --provider zai to see the catalog known to your installed version.

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Thinking levels

Full range: off, low, high, max (default off). OpenClaw maps low and high to Z.AI’s high reasoning effort, and max to Z.AI’s max effort, via reasoning_effort on the request payload.
Setting thinking to off avoids responses that spend the output budget on reasoning_content before visible text.

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Advanced configuration

Unknown glm-5* ids still forward-resolve on the provider path by synthesizing provider-owned metadata from the glm-4.7 template when the id matches the current GLM-5 family shape.
tool_stream is enabled by default for Z.AI tool-call streaming. To disable it:
Preserved thinking is opt-in because Z.AI requires the full historical reasoning_content to be replayed, which increases prompt tokens. Enable it per model:
When enabled and thinking is on, OpenClaw sends thinking: { type: "enabled", clear_thinking: false } and replays prior reasoning_content for the same OpenAI-compatible transcript. The snake_case preserve_thinking param key works as an alias.Advanced users can still override the exact provider payload with params.extra_body.thinking.
The Z.AI plugin registers image understanding.Image understanding is auto-resolved from the configured Z.AI auth — no additional config is needed.
  • Z.AI uses Bearer auth with your API key.
  • The zai-api-key onboarding choice auto-detects the matching Z.AI endpoint by probing supported endpoints with your key.
  • Use the explicit regional choices (zai-coding-global, zai-coding-cn, zai-global, zai-cn) when you want to force a specific API surface.
  • The legacy env var Z_AI_API_KEY is still accepted; OpenClaw copies it to ZAI_API_KEY at startup if ZAI_API_KEY is unset.

Model selection

Choosing providers, model refs, and failover behavior.

Configuration reference

Full OpenClaw config schema, including provider and model settings.