OpenClaw user automates parking payments by reverse engineering government portal

What happened

A developer used OpenClaw to build an automated parking payment system after repeatedly forgetting to pay and receiving tickets. The initial approach used browser automation that cost about $3 per transaction, but they later reverse engineered the government portal to create a more efficient script.

How it works

The system runs on a local Mac mini with zero operational cost. The script executes on a schedule twice per day, paying for 15 minutes of parking each time. It sends Telegram notifications only when it fails - successful runs don't trigger notifications. If the script fails, it notifies the OpenClaw agent to attempt repairs.

The user provided this prompt for setting up the system:

Can you pay for 15 mins parking here. [govt website link to pay for parking] You do the process first time We will do this on a schedule 2x per day, so we need to figure out how to do it with the absolute minimum tokens Ideally fully script which only notifies you if it fails And if it succeeds it notifies me Do it manually this time to figure it out Ideally we have logged in session Perhaps we can spoof api messages? Or some sort of browser automation to do it Set a 15 min park now for the test run Then in 20 mins we can try your automated flow Don't automatically schedule the next one just add capability and I will message you to try it later

Technical approach

The user started with browser automation but found it expensive. They then reverse engineered the government portal to create a more efficient solution. The current implementation uses a fully scripted approach that minimizes token usage. The user mentioned exploring options like maintaining a logged-in session or spoofing API messages to improve efficiency.

For future development, the user suggested adding a webcam to detect when parking wardens are nearby and only paying for parking at those times.