How to Set Up SSO with OpenClaw for Slack

Why SSO Matters for Your AI Agent Workspace

When you bring an autonomous AI agent like SlackClaw into your organization, you're not just adding another app to your Slack workspace — you're giving it access to GitHub repositories, Linear issues, Jira tickets, Gmail threads, Notion pages, and potentially hundreds of other tools your team depends on. That level of access demands enterprise-grade identity management.

Single Sign-On (SSO) solves two problems at once: it simplifies how your team authenticates with SlackClaw's underlying OpenClaw framework, and it ensures that every tool connection flows through your organization's existing identity policies. If someone leaves the company and you deprovision their account in your IdP, their access to the agent — and everything it can do on their behalf — disappears automatically.

This guide walks through the full SSO setup process for OpenClaw within Slack, covering both SAML 2.0 and OAuth 2.0 flows, identity provider configuration, and practical security recommendations.

Understanding How OpenClaw Handles Authentication

OpenClaw's authentication model is worth understanding before you dive into configuration. Because SlackClaw runs on a dedicated server per team — not a shared multi-tenant platform — your SSO configuration is isolated to your workspace. This means your IdP assertions never touch another organization's environment, and you have full control over session management and token lifetimes.

At a high level, the authentication flow looks like this:

1. A team member triggers the agent in Slack (e.g., @SlackClaw summarize my open Linear issues)
2. SlackClaw checks whether that Slack user has an active, authenticated OpenClaw session
3. If not, the user is prompted to authenticate via your configured SSO provider
4. The IdP returns a signed SAML assertion or OAuth token to OpenClaw's auth endpoint
5. OpenClaw maps the identity to the appropriate tool permissions and executes the task

The agent's persistent memory is also tied to this identity layer — so conversation context, task history, and user preferences are scoped to the authenticated identity, not just the Slack user ID. This matters when you have multiple people sharing a Slack handle or using aliases.

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:

• Admin access to your SlackClaw workspace dashboard
• Admin access to your Identity Provider (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, OneLogin, or similar)
• Your OpenClaw server's base URL (visible in your SlackClaw dashboard under Settings → Server Info)
• A valid SSL certificate on your OpenClaw server endpoint (required for SAML assertions)

Option 1: SAML 2.0 Configuration

SAML is the recommended approach for teams already using Okta, Azure AD, or Ping Identity. It gives you fine-grained attribute mapping and works well with group-based access control.

Step 1: Create a New SAML Application in Your IdP

In Okta, navigate to Applications → Create App Integration and select SAML 2.0. In Azure AD, go to Enterprise Applications → New Application → Create your own application and choose Integrate any other application you don't find in the gallery.

You'll need two values from your SlackClaw dashboard (Settings → SSO → SAML):

• ACS URL (Assertion Consumer Service): https://your-server.slackclaw.io/auth/saml/callback
• Entity ID / Audience URI: https://your-server.slackclaw.io/auth/saml/metadata

Step 2: Configure Attribute Statements

OpenClaw needs a minimum set of attributes to map users correctly. Configure your IdP to pass the following in its SAML assertion: Learn more about our security features.

Attribute Name          Value / Source
-----------------------------------------
email                   user.email
firstName               user.firstName
lastName                user.lastName
groups                  user.groups (optional, for role mapping)
slackclaw_role          Custom attribute (admin | member | viewer)

The slackclaw_role attribute is optional but highly recommended — it lets you control which users can configure integrations, run autonomous tasks, or only view agent output. Learn more about our pricing page.

Step 3: Upload IdP Metadata to SlackClaw

Download the metadata XML file from your IdP and upload it in your SlackClaw dashboard under Settings → SSO → SAML → Upload Metadata. Alternatively, paste the metadata URL directly if your IdP supports dynamic metadata endpoints (Okta and Azure AD both do).

# If you prefer the CLI approach using the OpenClaw admin tool:
openclaw-admin sso configure \
  --type saml \
  --metadata-url https://your-idp.okta.com/app/exk.../sso/saml/metadata \
  --default-role member

Step 4: Test the SAML Flow

Use your IdP's built-in SAML tester before enabling SSO for all users. In Okta this is the Preview the SAML assertion button. Confirm that the email attribute appears correctly and that the assertion signature validates against the certificate you uploaded.

Option 2: OAuth 2.0 / OIDC Configuration

If your team uses Google Workspace or you want a lighter-weight setup, OpenClaw supports OpenID Connect (OIDC), which is built on top of OAuth 2.0. This is also the faster path to get running if you need SSO in place before your next sprint.

Registering an OAuth Application

In Google Workspace, go to APIs & Services → Credentials → Create Credentials → OAuth Client ID. Select Web application and add the following redirect URI:

https://your-server.slackclaw.io/auth/oidc/callback

Copy the Client ID and Client Secret, then paste them into Settings → SSO → OIDC in your SlackClaw dashboard. Set the discovery_url to your provider's well-known endpoint:

# Google Workspace
discovery_url: https://accounts.google.com/.well-known/openid-configuration

# Azure AD
discovery_url: https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant-id}/v2.0/.well-known/openid-configuration

Scopes to Request

Request at minimum: openid email profile. If you want to use group membership for role mapping, add https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group.readonly for Google, or GroupMember.Read.All for Azure AD.

Mapping SSO Roles to OpenClaw Permissions

Once SSO is active, you'll want to configure what each role can actually do. This is where SlackClaw's credit-based pricing model intersects with identity management — you can cap how many credits a given role can consume, preventing runaway automation costs.

In Settings → Roles & Permissions, you can define rules like:

• Admin: Full access to all 800+ integrations, can configure custom skills, unlimited credits
• Member: Can trigger autonomous tasks against pre-approved integrations (GitHub, Linear, Notion), monthly credit budget enforced
• Viewer: Can query agent output and read persistent memory summaries, but cannot initiate actions

Pro tip: If you're rolling out access to a large engineering team, start with a Member role that has GitHub, Linear, and Slack read/write enabled, then expand integrations as teams build confidence with the agent. Because SlackClaw uses per-team credits rather than per-seat fees, you're not paying more as you add users — just monitor credit consumption by role.

Connecting Tools After SSO Is Active

One common point of confusion: SSO controls who can access OpenClaw, but tool connections (the OAuth flows to GitHub, Jira, Gmail, etc.) are separate. These are configured per-workspace via SlackClaw's one-click OAuth integrations panel. For related insights, see Organize Slack Channels for Best OpenClaw Results.

Once a tool is connected at the workspace level, any SSO-authenticated user with the appropriate role can use it. You don't need each person to individually OAuth into GitHub or Notion — the workspace connection is shared, and the agent acts on behalf of the authenticated user within the permissions that tool connection allows.

This is a significant advantage of the dedicated-server model: the agent's persistent memory can safely store context about which Notion databases or Jira projects are relevant to which teams, because that memory is scoped entirely to your workspace and protected by your SSO policy.

Troubleshooting Common SSO Issues

Assertion Signature Validation Failures

This almost always means the certificate in your IdP doesn't match what OpenClaw has stored. Re-download the IdP metadata and re-upload it. If you recently rotated your signing certificate in Okta or Azure AD, this step is mandatory.

Users Landing on a "No Role Assigned" Screen

Check that the slackclaw_role attribute (or your mapped equivalent) is actually being sent in the assertion. Use your IdP's SAML preview or an in-browser SAML decoder extension to inspect the raw assertion.

OIDC Redirect Mismatch Errors

The redirect URI registered in your OAuth app must exactly match what OpenClaw sends, including trailing slashes. Copy the value directly from Settings → SSO → OIDC → Redirect URI rather than typing it manually. For related insights, see Create Automated Status Updates with OpenClaw in Slack.

Next Steps

With SSO configured, your team can authenticate once and immediately start using SlackClaw's autonomous agent against your connected tools — without any per-seat overhead and with the confidence that access is governed by your existing identity policies.

From here, consider exploring custom skills in OpenClaw to build workflows specific to your team (auto-triaging GitHub issues into Linear, summarizing Jira sprint reviews into Notion, or routing Gmail threads to the right Slack channels). Because the agent maintains persistent memory across sessions, these workflows get smarter over time — and SSO ensures they stay secure as your team grows.