awesome-openclaw-agents/configs/glm-5.1

GLM-5.1 Agent Configs

Drop-in OpenClaw configs for Zhipu's GLM-5.1 — the model that most r/openclaw threads this week are calling "the closest thing to Opus 4.6 you can actually buy today."

Why GLM-5.1

If you landed here because your Claude access got cut off, this is probably the bundle you want to try first. Community sentiment on the r/openclaw "moved off Claude" megathread ranks GLM-5.1 above every other non-Anthropic option for long-horizon coding. It holds context across multi-file edits, follows tool-call schemas without drift, and — unlike most alternatives — your existing Opus 4.6 / Sonnet 4.6 system prompts mostly "just work" without rewrites.

It is not magic. See Gotchas below.

Quick Start

1. Get an API key from the Zhipu / z.ai console (see official docs for the current URL — it changed twice this quarter).

2. Register the provider with OpenClaw:

openclaw provider add glm \
  --api-key $GLM_API_KEY \
  --base-url https://api.z.ai/api/coding/paas/v4

3. Copy the agent bundle:

cp configs/glm-5.1/SOUL.md ~/.openclaw/agents/coding-assistant/SOUL.md

4. Run it:

openclaw agent --agent coding-assistant --message "Refactor this function to use async/await"

Model IDs

Model ID	Context	Good For
glm-5.1	200K	Default. Use this unless you have a reason not to.
glm-5.1-air	128K	Cheaper, faster, noticeably weaker on multi-file refactors.
glm-5.1-flash	64K	Cheap classification / routing / small edits.

Set it in your SOUL.md front matter as Model: glm/glm-5.1.

Cost Comparison (April 2026)

Rough per-million-token pricing. Confirm current numbers on each provider's pricing page — these move.

Model	Input	Output	Notes
Claude Opus 4.6	$15	$75	If you can get access.
Claude Sonnet 4.6	$3	$15	Still the price-performance baseline.
GLM-5.1	$0.60	$2.20	~25x cheaper than Opus on output.
GLM-5.1 Air	$0.20	$1.10

For an all-day OpenClaw session burning ~2M output tokens, that's the difference between a $150 Claude day and a $5 GLM day.

Gotchas When Migrating From Claude

These are all things actual users hit on r/openclaw in the last week. Not invented.

1. System prompt length matters more than on Claude. GLM-5.1 starts losing instructions around the 8K mark in the system message. If you have a bloated Opus SOUL.md with dozens of rules, trim it. The SOUL.md in this folder is intentionally lean.

2. "Thinking" tags are different. Claude's extended thinking is transparent; GLM emits a <think>...</think> block that some OpenClaw UI clients render raw. If your TUI looks noisy, update OpenClaw to 2026.4.11+ which strips it by default.

3. Tool-call JSON is stricter. Claude will sometimes heal malformed tool JSON; GLM will not. If you have custom tools, double-check your schemas. This is the #1 cause of "GLM doesn't work for me" posts that turn out to be config issues.

4. Chinese-language leakage on very long runs. After ~30K tokens of back-and-forth, GLM-5.1 occasionally drops a Chinese word into English output. Add Always respond in English only to your rules (the SOUL.md here already does).

5. Refusals are rarer but blunter. When GLM does refuse, it doesn't give the polite Claude-style explanation — it just stops. If an agent looks stuck, check for a short terminal "Sorry, I cannot help with that."

Prompt Tweaks vs Claude

Coming from a Claude prompt, the two edits that matter most:

• Drop the <thinking> scaffolding. If your Claude prompt tells the model to "think step by step inside <thinking> tags," remove it. GLM already does this via its own reasoning pass and will double-wrap.
• Be more explicit about output format. Claude infers "return just the code" from context; GLM is happier with Return ONLY a fenced code block. No prose.

Related Reddit Threads (verify before citing)

• r/openclaw "Megathread: If you've moved OpenClaw off Claude..."
• r/openclaw "We chose GLM-5.1 because its the best alternative to opus"

Files in This Bundle

• SOUL.md — working coding-assistant agent tuned for GLM-5.1
• .env.example — the one env var you need