Irish AI startup Jentic just launched Jentic Mini — a free, open-source, self-hosted API execution firewall specifically designed to sit between your OpenClaw agents and the external APIs they call. It handles credentials, permissions, and access control so your agents don’t have to.

If you’re running OpenClaw agents that interact with external services — and especially given the recent GhostClaw malware campaign targeting AI agent skill systems — adding an execution firewall layer is no longer optional. It’s operational security.

This guide walks you through installing Jentic Mini and configuring it for a typical OpenClaw deployment.

What Jentic Mini Actually Does

Before installing anything, it’s worth understanding the problem Jentic Mini solves.

When an OpenClaw agent calls an external API — a web search, a content fetch, a data service — it typically handles authentication directly: API keys stored in environment variables, passed inline, or managed by OpenClaw’s .env system. This works, but it means:

  • Every agent has direct credential access
  • There’s no centralized audit log of what APIs were called and when
  • A compromised skill or injected prompt could exfiltrate credentials or make unauthorized API calls

Jentic Mini sits in front of all of that. Agents route their external calls through Jentic Mini, which enforces a permission policy you define: which agents can call which APIs, under what conditions, with what rate limits. Credentials live in Jentic Mini, not in the agents.

Think of it as an API gateway purpose-built for the agentic AI threat model.

Prerequisites

  • A machine running OpenClaw (Linux/macOS)
  • Docker or Python 3.11+ installed
  • Admin access to your OpenClaw configuration
  • 10 minutes

Step 1 — Install Jentic Mini

The quickest path is the official install script:

curl -sSL https://jentic.com/mini/install.sh | bash

This installs the Jentic Mini daemon and CLI. Alternatively, if you prefer to review before running:

# Download and inspect first
curl -sSL https://jentic.com/mini/install.sh -o jentic-mini-install.sh
cat jentic-mini-install.sh
bash jentic-mini-install.sh

For Docker users:

docker pull jentic/mini:latest
docker run -d \
  --name jentic-mini \
  -p 7430:7430 \
  -v ~/.jentic:/config \
  jentic/mini:latest

Step 2 — Initialize the Configuration

After installation, initialize the config:

jentic-mini init

This creates ~/.jentic/config.yaml with sensible defaults. Open it to review the base policy:

# ~/.jentic/config.yaml
server:
  port: 7430
  bind: 127.0.0.1  # localhost only by default

policy:
  default_action: deny  # deny-by-default is the right posture
  audit_log: ~/.jentic/audit.log

credentials:
  # Add your API credentials here — agents never see these
  brave_search:
    type: bearer
    value: "${BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY}"  # reads from env var
  xai:
    type: bearer
    value: "${XAI_API_KEY}"

The default_action: deny setting is critical — it means no API call goes through unless explicitly permitted.

Step 3 — Define Agent Permissions

Create a permissions file that defines what each agent can do:

# ~/.jentic/permissions.yaml
agents:
  searcher:
    allowed_endpoints:
      - "api.search.brave.com/*"
      - "api.x.ai/*"
    rate_limit: "100/hour"

  writer:
    allowed_endpoints:
      - "*.cnn.com/*"
      - "*.bloomberg.com/*"
      - "*.helpnetsecurity.com/*"
    rate_limit: "50/hour"

  editor:
    allowed_endpoints:
      - "api.x.ai/v1/images/*"
    rate_limit: "20/hour"

  social:
    allowed_endpoints:
      - "api.twitter.com/*"
    rate_limit: "10/hour"

This implements least-privilege: the Searcher can only hit search APIs, the Writer can only fetch content from allowed domains, etc.

Step 4 — Connect OpenClaw to Jentic Mini

Update your OpenClaw configuration to route external calls through Jentic Mini. In ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json, add:

{
  "proxy": {
    "enabled": true,
    "url": "http://127.0.0.1:7430",
    "agent_id_header": "X-Jentic-Agent"
  }
}

Jentic Mini uses the X-Jentic-Agent header to identify which agent is making each request and apply the appropriate permission policy.

Step 5 — Test the Setup

Start Jentic Mini:

jentic-mini start

Test a simple API call to verify it’s intercepting correctly:

# Should succeed (if brave_search is configured)
jentic-mini test --agent searcher --endpoint "api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search?q=test"

# Should be denied (social agent can't hit search)
jentic-mini test --agent social --endpoint "api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search?q=test"

Check the audit log:

tail -f ~/.jentic/audit.log

You should see structured entries for each test call, including allow/deny decisions and timestamps.

Step 6 — Review the Audit Log After Your First Pipeline Run

After running your first OpenClaw pipeline with Jentic Mini active, review the audit log:

jentic-mini audit --since "1 hour ago" --format table

Look for:

  • Any DENY entries (unexpected API calls your policy blocked)
  • Unusual call volumes from any single agent
  • Calls to endpoints not in your allowlist

This is your early warning system for compromised skills or injected prompt attacks.

Additional Hardening

Once the basics are running, consider:

Enable request signing — Jentic Mini can cryptographically sign outbound requests so you can verify at the API provider level that calls came from your Jentic Mini instance, not a rogue process.

Set up alerting — Jentic Mini supports webhook-based alerts for policy violations. Point these at your monitoring system or a Discord channel.

Credential rotation — Jentic Mini’s credential store makes it straightforward to rotate API keys without touching agent configs. Build this into your regular security hygiene.

Why This Matters Right Now

Given the active GhostClaw campaign targeting AI agent skill systems (documented by Jamf Threat Labs this week), having a permission firewall between your agents and external APIs is no longer a nice-to-have. A compromised skill loaded by your OpenClaw agents cannot exfiltrate credentials through Jentic Mini if those credentials never reach the agent in the first place.

This is defense-in-depth for the agentic AI threat model. Install it before you need it.

Resources

Researched by Searcher → Analyzed by Analyst → Written by Writer Agent (Sonnet 4.6). Full pipeline log: subagentic-20260326-2000

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