Small helper scripts for OpenClaw users on Venice who want to stretch the daily DIEM budget automatically.

Venice gives DIEM token holders about $1/day of inference. This repo checks how much of that daily allocation is already spent, then moves OpenClaw to cheaper or faster Venice models as the day goes on so you do not burn the budget too early.

• venice_balance.py calls the Venice billing endpoint and reads VENICE_ADMIN_KEY.
• venice-model-switcher.py maps DIEM usage to a model tier, sets the default OpenClaw model, and patches active Venice sessions to the same target model when needed.
• At the start of a fresh daily DIEM window it drops back to the cheapest default tier automatically.

The default thresholds live in venice-model-switcher.py:

• 0%+ -> venice/claude-sonnet-4-6
• 35%+ -> venice/grok-4-20-beta
• 65%+ -> venice/gemini-3-flash-preview
• 90%+ -> venice/grok-41-fast
• 100% -> ollama/qwen3.5:397b-cloud (configurable via VENICE_SWITCH_EXHAUSTED_MODEL)

When DIEM is fully exhausted (100%), the switcher moves to a non-Venice provider so the agent can still respond. The default exhausted model is ollama/qwen3.5:397b-cloud (Ollama Cloud). Set VENICE_SWITCH_EXHAUSTED_MODEL to use a different fallback provider/model.

Edit MODELS and MODEL_TIERS if you want different tradeoffs.

We intentionally do not use venice/kimi-k2-5 in the default ladder right now because of upstream tool-calling reliability problems in OpenClaw: openclaw/openclaw#40742.

1. Make sure python3 is installed.
2. Make sure openclaw is on your PATH, or set OPENCLAW_BIN.
3. Copy .env.example to .env.
4. Put your Venice admin key in .env:

VENICE_ADMIN_KEY=...

5. Run it manually once:

python3 venice-model-switcher.py

Use this when you want the raw Venice DIEM balance without changing any OpenClaw settings.

Default output is compact JSON:

python3 venice_balance.py

Example fields:

• used
• remaining
• total
• percentage_used
• usd_balance

Print only the used percentage:

python3 venice_balance.py --percentage

Read the key from a different environment variable:

python3 venice_balance.py --key-env MY_VENICE_ADMIN_KEY

venice-model-switcher.py uses this script internally, but it is also handy for cron checks, dashboards, or debugging.

Default behavior is intentionally cheap on steady-state runs:

• it reads the DIEM percentage
• computes the target tier
• skips sessions.list when the target tier is unchanged and no session reconciliation is pending
• queries and patches sessions only when the tier changes, or when a previous patch attempt did not finish successfully

Force the old always-reconcile behavior:

python3 venice-model-switcher.py --query-sessions

This is useful if you want to re-apply pinned sessions or reconcile existing sessions on demand.

The switcher keeps a small state file so it remembers:

• the last default tier it applied
• the last session patch tier it completed
• the last DIEM percentage it saw

By default the state file is stored at ~/.openclaw/diem-switch-state.json and the log file at ~/.openclaw/diem-switch.log.

• VENICE_ADMIN_KEY: required Venice Admin API key.
• OPENCLAW_BIN: optional path to the OpenClaw binary.
• VENICE_SWITCH_ENV_FILE: optional env file path for venice-model-switcher.py.
• VENICE_BALANCE_ENV_FILE: optional env file path for venice_balance.py.
• VENICE_BALANCE_SCRIPT: optional path to venice_balance.py if you split the files up.
• VENICE_SWITCH_PINNED_SESSIONS: optional comma-separated session pins like session-key=grok-41-fast.
• VENICE_SWITCH_LOG_FILE: optional path to the switcher log file.
• VENICE_SWITCH_STATE_FILE: optional path to the switcher state file.
• VENICE_SWITCH_EXHAUSTED_MODEL: optional model to use when DIEM is fully exhausted (default: ollama/qwen3.5:397b-cloud).

By default both scripts look for a .env file next to the script itself.

Run the switcher every 5-10 minutes. That is enough for the default tiering.

*/10 * * * * /usr/bin/python3 /path/to/venice-model-switcher.py >> /tmp/venice-model-switcher.log 2>&1

Example unit files are included in systemd/venice-model-switcher.service and systemd/venice-model-switcher.timer.

They are user units, so on unattended Linux hosts you may also want:

loginctl enable-linger "$USER"

Service:

[Unit]
Description=OpenClaw Venice model switcher

[Service]
Type=oneshot
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/repo
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /path/to/repo/venice-model-switcher.py

Timer:

[Unit]
Description=Run Venice model switcher every 10 minutes

[Timer]
OnBootSec=2min
OnUnitActiveSec=10min
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Enable it with:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp systemd/venice-model-switcher.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
cp systemd/venice-model-switcher.timer ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now venice-model-switcher.timer

• VENICE_ADMIN_KEY needs Admin scope because the billing endpoint requires it.
• Pinned session overrides are optional and should be configured via environment, not hard-coded into the repo.

• Full OpenClaw setup write-up