PART 2: WHAT YOU NEED BEFORE INSTALLING

1. Node.js version 22 or higher

Node.js is a program OpenClaw needs to run. Check if you already have it — open Terminal (press Command + Space, type "Terminal", hit Enter) and type:

node --version

If it shows v22 or higher, you're good. If not — or if you get an error — go to nodejs.org, download the latest version, and install it like any normal app.

2. An AI API Key

This connects OpenClaw to an AI brain. You need at least one.

Which one should you pick?

Provider	Cost	Best for
Claude Sonnet (Anthropic)	~$2–5/day	Best starting point. Smart, fast, handles almost everything.
Minimax	$10/month flat	Cheapest way to start. Solid for most tasks.
Kimi K2.5	~$20/month (Moderato plan)	Popular budget pick. Great at doing tasks.
Claude Opus 4.6	~$200/month	Most powerful. Worth it once you're using OpenClaw heavily.
OpenAI (GPT)	Varies	Good if you already pay for ChatGPT.

Recommendation: Start with Claude Sonnet or Minimax. Both are affordable and capable. You can switch later with a single command.

Where to get your key: - Claude: platform.anthropic.com → Sign up → API keys → Create key - Minimax: minimaxi.com → Sign up → Get API key - Kimi: kimi.com → Sign up → Get API key

3. A messaging app on your phone

Pick one to start with:

• WhatsApp — Works great if you want to reach it from anywhere (Part 4 covers this)
• Telegram — Very popular in the OpenClaw community, slightly easier to set up
• Discord — Better for automated pipelines once you're advanced

Start with just one. Get it working before you think about adding a second.

---

PART 3: INSTALLING OPENCLAW

Step 1 — Open Terminal

Press Command + Space, type "Terminal", hit Enter. A window with a blinking cursor appears. This is where you type commands.

Step 2 — Install OpenClaw

Type this exactly and hit Enter:

npm install -g openclaw@latest

A bunch of text will scroll by — that's normal. When it stops and gives you a cursor again, it's done.

Step 3 — Run the Setup Wizard

Type this and hit Enter:

openclaw onboard --install-daemon

The wizard walks you through setup. Here's exactly what to do at each step:

"Do you understand this is powerful and risky?" → Hit yes.

"Quick Start or Custom?" → Choose Quick Start.

"Which AI model?" → Pick the one you signed up for in Part 2.

"Enter your API token" — Stop. This is where most people mess up. Don't rush it.

⚠️ Do this exactly or it won't work: 1. Copy your API key from the provider's website 2. Open Apple Notes (or any text editor) 3. Paste your key there first 4. Make sure it's one long single line — no line breaks, no spaces at the beginning or end 5. Copy it from Notes 6. Now paste it into the wizard

If there's a hidden line break in there, it silently fails. Pasting through Notes first catches this every time.

"Which messaging channel?" → Choose WhatsApp or Telegram. Follow the pairing steps on screen — it walks you through it.

Step 4 — Start the Gateway

openclaw channels login
openclaw gateway --port 18789

OpenClaw is now running. Open this in your browser: http://127.0.0.1:18789/

If a dashboard loads, you're up and running.

---

PART 4: ACCESS IT FROM ANYWHERE (Remote Access)

Skip this part if you'll only use OpenClaw while you're home on the same WiFi. If you want to text it from your phone when you're out — read this.

The problem: Your Mac is home on your WiFi. Your phone out in the world is on mobile data — a completely different network. OpenClaw can't hear you unless there's a bridge between them.

The fix: Tailscale. It's a free app that creates a private, invisible tunnel between your phone and your Mac. Even from anywhere in the world, your Mac is reachable — but only by you. Nobody else can see or access it.

Set Up Tailscale (5 minutes)

1. Go to tailscale.com — create a free account
2. Download Tailscale on your Mac: tailscale.com/download
3. Download Tailscale on your iPhone: search "Tailscale" in the App Store
4. Sign into the same Tailscale account on both
5. Done — your Mac now has a private address your phone can always reach

Stop Your Mac From Sleeping

A sleeping Mac means a dead OpenClaw. Fix it now:

System Settings → Battery → Options → turn on "Prevent automatic sleeping when power adapter is connected."

Keep your MacBook plugged in and it'll stay on 24/7.

---

PART 5: YOUR FIRST DAY — DO THESE IN ORDER

You're installed and running. Don't skip these steps — they're the difference between an agent that actually works for you and one that just feels like a dumb chatbot.

---

Step 1 — Run Bootstrap First (Before You Ask It Anything)

OpenClaw ships with a file called BOOTSTRAP.md. It's a first-run checklist that sets up your agent's identity and prepares it to work with you. It's designed to run on your very first ever message.

The catch: If you ask your agent a real question first — even just "hey what's the weather?" — it answers it and skips bootstrap entirely. Your agent then has no idea who you are.

Your very first message must be:

"Hey, let's get you set up. Read BOOTSTRAP.md and walk me through it."

Nothing else first. This takes 5 minutes and prevents a lot of confusion down the road.

---

Step 2 — Introduce Yourself

After bootstrap, tell your agent everything about you. Think of it like briefing a new employee on their first day.

Tell it: - Who you are and what you do - How you want it to work with you — proactive? Always suggest ideas? Ask before big moves? - Your goals — what are you actually trying to accomplish with this?

Example:

"I'm [name]. I'm a [job/background]. My main goals right now are [X and Y]. I want you to be proactive — don't ask permission for every little thing. Push us toward our goals."

This gets saved to memory and shows up automatically in every future conversation.

---

Step 3 — Set Up the 4 Key Files (Your Agent's Brain)

This is the part most people skip, and it's why their agent feels generic and forgetful. These four files are what separate a basic chatbot from an agent that actually knows you and knows what to do.

Ask your agent to set them up one at a time using the prompts below.

---

SOUL.md — Your agent's personality

Every session, your agent reads this file first — before doing anything else. It defines who your agent is: its name, how it talks, its personality. Without this, your agent is a blank slate every time you open a new chat. With it, it's the same consistent assistant every single time.

"Let's write your SOUL.md together. I want you to have a name and a personality that fits how I work. Ask me questions and we'll build it out."

---

AGENTS.md — The rulebook

This tells your agent what to do at the start of every session automatically — what files to read, what rules to follow, how to behave. Here's a template that works well — show it to your agent:

# AGENTS.md – How I Operate

## Every Session — Do This First, No Exceptions
1. Read SOUL.md — this is who I am
2. Read USER.md — this is who I'm helping
3. Read today's and yesterday's memory logs
4. Read MEMORY.md for long-term context
5. Write 1–3 goals for this session before doing anything

Don't ask permission to do this. Just do it.

## Memory Rules
- User says "remember this" → write it to MEMORY.md right now
- Important decisions and preferences → MEMORY.md
- Today's work in progress → today's daily log
- Never keep important stuff only in my head — write it down

## How to Behave
- Be proactive. Don't wait to be asked for obvious next steps.
- If I've tried the same approach 3 times without success, stop and ask.
- Before doing anything that can't be undone, confirm first.
- If a task is blocked, say so clearly and suggest what to try instead.

"Let's write our AGENTS.md. Use this template as a starting point and walk me through each section."

The most important line: "Don't ask permission. Just do it." You don't want your agent asking "Should I check my memory?" every session. You want it to just do it.

---

USER.md — Everything about you

Your agent reads this every session. It stores everything you've told it about yourself — your background, goals, preferences, how you like to work — so it never has to re-ask.

"Let's fill in USER.md together. Ask me questions about my background, goals, and how I work."

---

HEARTBEAT.md — What it does in the background

Your agent automatically wakes up every 30 minutes to check if there's anything to do. This file tells it what to actually check on during those wake-ups.

"Let's write our HEARTBEAT.md. During your background check-ins, I want you to [check my task list / look for new mentions / save anything important from recent sessions — pick what makes sense for you]."

---

Step 4 — Set Up Your Morning Brief

This is the most popular first workflow people build, and for good reason. Ask your agent to send you a daily report every morning:

"Schedule a morning brief for me every day at 8am. Send it to my [WhatsApp/Telegram]. Include: the weather in [your city], top news about [your interests], my tasks for today, and one thing you think we should work on to move closer to my goals."

Customize the topics and time however you want. Once you set it, it runs every morning by itself — you never touch it again.

---

Step 5 — Build Your Mission Control (Optional)

Mission control is a custom dashboard your agent builds on your computer. You add tools to it over time — task lists, trackers, approval queues, whatever you need. Your agent builds all of it.

"I want you to build a mission control — a custom dashboard where we'll add tools over time to be more productive. Build it using Next.js and host it locally."

Optional for day one, but worth doing early — it gets more useful the more you add.

---

⚠️ The Mistake Almost Everyone Makes About Overnight Work

Before you text your agent "work on this while I sleep" — read this.

When you close the chat, your agent forgets everything. A session only lives while the chat is open. Closing it ends the session completely. Your agent isn't secretly working in the background.

If you want your agent to actually do something while you're away, you need to set up a task queue and scheduled sessions — basically, a list your agent checks on a regular schedule, picks up a task, does it, messages you the result, and closes itself down cleanly. It's not "remembering" a conversation. It's running fresh jobs on a timer.

To set it up:

"I want to give you tasks that run while I'm away. Set up a task queue and scheduled sessions so you can work overnight and message me the results when you're done."

---

PART 6: MEMORY — HOW YOUR AGENT REMEMBERS THINGS

Memory is the #1 thing the OpenClaw community agrees you need to get right from day one. Without a proper memory setup, your agent forgets everything between sessions and you're constantly repeating yourself.

How Memory Works

OpenClaw saves everything in plain text files on your computer. You can open and edit them yourself.

MEMORY.md — Long-term stuff. Your preferences, goals, decisions, things that should matter forever. Your agent reads this at the start of every conversation automatically.

Daily log files — Short-term stuff. What happened today, tasks in progress, notes from recent chats. Your agent pulls these up when it needs recent context.

Simple rule: if something will still matter next month → MEMORY.md. If it only matters today → daily log.

Tip: Your agent won't always save things on its own at first. Say "write this to memory" when something important comes up. It gets better at knowing what to save on its own over time.

Why Memory Sometimes Misses Things

The built-in memory works fine at first. But after a few weeks of use, it can miss things. It matches exact words — if you wrote something in slightly different words than what you're searching for, it won't find it.

Upgrade: QMD Memory (Do This Once You're Settled)

QMD is a smarter memory search system that's officially built into OpenClaw — not a third-party add-on. Instead of matching exact words, it searches by meaning.

Write "decided to keep the gateway running on the Mac Mini" and search for "server setup" — it still finds it, because it understands these phrases are about the same thing. Everything runs on your computer — no internet, no extra fees.

How to install (3 commands in Terminal):

# Install Bun (a program QMD needs)
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

# Install SQLite (a database tool QMD uses)
brew install sqlite

# Install QMD
bun install -g https://github.com/tobi/qmd

Then tell OpenClaw:

"Set my memory backend to QMD."

Restart your gateway. Memory searches will take a second or two longer but will find the right thing even when the wording doesn't match exactly.

---

PART 7: SKILLS — TEACH YOUR AGENT NEW TRICKS

This is the most underused feature in OpenClaw, and ironically the simplest. Most people assume it involves coding. It doesn't.

What Is a Skill?

A skill is a plain English text file with instructions. That's it. Your agent reads it like a recipe — it understands the steps and follows them using tools it already has.

No code. No programming. Just writing.

Where Skills Live

~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/
  └── your-skill-name/
        └── skill.md     ← this is the skill

Each skill gets its own folder. The file inside is always called skill.md.

What a Skill Looks Like

# skill.md — [Name]

## Purpose
One sentence: what does this skill do?

## Steps
1. First thing to do
2. Second thing
3. Third thing — be specific about files, formats, or what tools to use

## Example Output
[Paste an example of exactly what the finished result should look like]

Real Example

# skill.md — Daily Standup Generator

## Purpose
Create a short daily summary of what got done, what's planned, and what's stuck.

## Steps
1. Read yesterday's and today's memory log files
2. Pull out: what got done, what's planned, what's blocked
3. Format it as:
   - Yesterday: bullet list
   - Today: bullet list
   - Blockers: bullet list
4. Save to memory/standups/[today's date].md
5. Send to my messaging channel

## Example Output
**Yesterday:**
- Finished the client proposal
- Fixed the broken link on the site

**Today:**
- Send the proposal
- Write the newsletter draft

**Blockers:**
- Waiting on the logo from the designer

Real, working skill. No code. Just instructions.

How to Create a Skill

Tell your agent what you want — it writes the file for you:

"Create a skill called [name]. Its purpose is [what it does]. The steps are: [describe what you want]. Save it to workspace/skills/[name]/skill.md."

Review it, tweak anything, and it's ready to use.

Skill ideas to get you started: - summarize-url — paste any link, get a clean summary - research — deep research on a topic, saved to a file - content-draft — give it a topic, get a first draft in your writing style - social-monitor — check for trending topics or mentions and send a report

Keep skills under 8 at a time. More than 8 and your agent starts forgetting some of them exist. Build slowly, keep only what you actually use.

---

PART 8: SECURITY — PLEASE READ THIS

OpenClaw has access to basically everything on your computer. Every file. Every app you're signed into. Every saved password. That's the whole point — and it's also why security matters.

Real organizations — Microsoft, Bitsight, Akamai — have published actual research about credential leaks from people using OpenClaw carelessly. This isn't made up or exaggerated.

3 Rules to Always Follow

Rule 1: Keep it private. Only you should ever message your agent. Don't add it to group chats. Don't let other people use it. Here's why: if a stranger sends your agent a message, they can word it in a way that tricks your agent into handing over your passwords and API keys. This type of attack is called "prompt injection" — it's real and well documented.

Rule 2: Don't point it at public content. Don't have your agent read your public tweet replies, open comment sections, or any place where random people can write things. Those posts could contain hidden instructions designed to trick your agent.

Rule 3: Ask for a plan before big tasks. Before any task that can't be undone, make your agent explain itself first:

"Before you do anything, tell me step by step exactly what you're about to do."

Protect Your API Keys With Jentic (Free)

Every API key you give OpenClaw sits in its memory. If someone tricks your agent, those keys can be stolen. There are real documented cases of this happening.

Jentic is a free tool that acts as a secure middleman. You give your API keys to Jentic — not directly to OpenClaw. When your agent needs to use a service, it asks Jentic to do it on its behalf. Your actual key never touches your agent.

Setup: 1. Go to docs.jentic.com/guides/openclaw — create a free account 2. Add your services (Gmail, GitHub, Slack, etc.) 3. Enter your credentials once — Jentic keeps them secure 4. Tell OpenClaw: "Route all external service calls through Jentic from now on."

---

PART 9: SAVING MONEY ON AI COSTS

AI usage costs money. But most people way overspend because of one simple mistake.

The Biggest Waste: Running Everything Through Your Best Model

By default, every single thing OpenClaw does — including those background heartbeat checks every 30 minutes — runs through your most powerful (and most expensive) AI model. That's like hiring a brain surgeon to do your grocery run.

The fix: cheap models for simple tasks, expensive models only when you need them.

People report cutting their costs by up to 90% just by doing this one thing.

What your agent is doing	Model to use
Heartbeats and background checks	Cheapest available — these need zero intelligence
Normal daily conversations and tasks	Mid-range — good balance of quality and cost
Complex problems, hard decisions	Your best model — only when it actually matters

To set this up:

"I want to set up tiered model routing. Use [cheap model] for heartbeats, [mid model] for everyday work, and [powerful model] only when I ask for something complex."

Switch Models Mid-Chat

No need to change settings or restart anything. Just type in your chat:

/models

A list pops up. Tap one. Done. Works on WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord.

Other useful commands you can type in chat:

Command	What it does
/models	See and switch between models instantly
/usage	See how many tokens you've used and roughly what it cost
/help	See everything you can type

Budget Models Worth Knowing (Feb 2026)

Not all cheap models work equally well for agents. A model can be great at chatting but break when it tries to actually do things — and "doing things" is 90% of what OpenClaw is for.

Good budget options:

Model	Cost	Notes
GPT-5 nano	Cents/day	Great for heartbeats. Too basic for real tasks.
MiniMax M2.5	$10/month flat	Solid daily driver. Occasionally replies in Chinese.
Kimi K2.5	~$20/month (Moderato plan)	Most popular budget pick in the community. Great at using tools.
GLM-5	Pay per use	Decent but hits rate limits fast.

Prices change — check artificialanalysis.ai for current comparisons.

Kimi tip: Get it via OpenRouter instead of directly — it's cheaper. OpenRouter also lets you switch between dozens of models without needing to pre-configure each one.

MiniMax tip: The $10 plan says 100 prompts per 5 hours, but the counter resets every 4 hours. For normal use, this almost never actually feels limited.

Models That Break for Agent Work

• DeepSeek Reasoner — Great at thinking, but produces broken tool calls. Multiple confirmed reports in the community. Use DeepSeek Chat instead.
• GPT-5.1 Mini — Widely reported as basically useless for running tasks. Fine for conversation only.

Expect Higher Costs Your First Week

First week is always more expensive. You're teaching your agent about yourself, setting up memory, building skills — all of it burns more tokens than day-to-day use ever will.

Budget $20–30 for week one. It drops significantly after that.

Free tip: When you're stuck troubleshooting something, use the free claude.ai website or ChatGPT to figure it out. Don't burn your API credits debugging — paste the problem into a free browser chat.

Same for prompts: If your agent isn't doing what you want, paste your instructions into claude.ai and ask "how can I make this clearer?" Better instructions = much better output, especially from cheaper models.

OpenClaw Isn't a Coding Tool

Important: OpenClaw is a personal assistant and automation platform. It's not built for writing serious code.

For actual coding work, use: - Cursor (~$20/month) — AI-native coding editor - VS Code + GitHub Copilot (~$10/month) — familiar editor with AI built in - Claude Code — Anthropic's own command-line coding agent

You can still use OpenClaw to manage coding projects — assign tasks, review results, track what's done. Just let the right tool do the actual code writing.

---

PART 10: GET MORE OUT OF YOUR AGENT

These are mindset shifts that make the difference between a setup that's just okay and one that actually changes how you work every day.

Ask Questions Instead of Giving Orders

Most people tell their agent what to do. The better approach is to ask your agent what it thinks you should do.

Instead of: "Write a blog post about X." Try: "Based on what you know about me and my goals, what kind of content should I be creating this week?"

Instead of: "Add a calendar widget to mission control." Try: "What tools should we build in mission control that would actually make our workflow better?"

Your agent knows a lot about you from your memory files. When you ask for its thinking, you get answers that are genuinely personalized — not just generic completions.

When Something Goes Wrong, Make It Fix Itself

If your agent makes a mistake or gets stuck, don't just correct it and move on. Turn it into a skill so it never happens again:

"Pause — something went wrong here. Let's write a skill that prevents this. What rule should you follow in this situation?"

This is how your setup actually improves over time instead of repeating the same mistakes.

Never Edit Config Files Yourself

If you want to change a setting, tell your agent what you want and let it make the change. Editing config files directly is a great way to break things in ways that are hard to diagnose later.

If Something Isn't Working

Run this in Terminal:

openclaw doctor --fix

This checks for common problems and tries to fix them automatically. Try this before spending an hour manually poking around.

---

PART 11: ADVANCED STUFF (Come Back to This Later)

Get everything in Parts 1–10 working before you read this. These features are genuinely useful but will only overwhelm you if you haven't got the basics running yet.

---

Free Web Search With SearXNG

The Brave Search API — a common way to give OpenClaw web search — switched to paid-per-use. The free alternative is SearXNG: your own private search engine running on your Mac.

You set it up with Docker — a tool that runs apps in a self-contained box on your computer. You don't need to know how Docker works.

1. Download Docker Desktop from docker.com (free, installs like any app)
2. Open Terminal and run:

docker run -d --name searxng -p 8080:8080 searxng/searxng

1. Tell OpenClaw:

   "For all web searches, use SearXNG at http://localhost:8080."

Free web search, running locally, forever.

---

Back Up Your Setup With Git

As you customize OpenClaw, you will eventually break something — it's just part of it. Git saves a snapshot every time you make a change, so you can always roll back to a version that worked.

"Set up Git version control for our workspace. Track all my skills, configs, and settings so I can roll back if something breaks."

Your agent handles the setup.

---

Full Conversation Search With ChromaDB

Regular memory only saves what your agent explicitly writes down. ChromaDB goes further — it saves your entire conversation history and makes it searchable. If your agent forgot something from three weeks ago, it can now search through your actual past conversations and find it.

"I want to use ChromaDB to save and search all our past conversation transcripts. Set it up so you can search them when you need context you've forgotten."

---

Discord for Automated Pipelines

Once you're comfortable, Discord is great for multi-step automated workflows. Unlike Telegram (which is for conversation), Discord lets you set up separate channels where your agent does different things on a schedule.

Example: - #trends — every 2 hours, finds trending content on your topics - #research — turns those into deeper research notes - #drafts — turns the research into first draft content

Give OpenClaw admin access to your Discord server, then:

"I want to build an automated Discord workflow. Based on what you know about me and my goals, what channels should we create and what should each one do?"

---

Useful Links

• Official Docs: docs.openclaw.ai
• Security Docs: docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/security
• Community Runbook: github.com/digitalknk/openclaw-runbook
• Jentic Setup: docs.jentic.com/guides/openclaw
• QMD Memory Guide: josecasanova.com/blog/openclaw-qmd-memory
• Model Price Tracker: artificialanalysis.ai

---

QUICK REFERENCE

Core Commands

node --version                        # Check Node is v22+
npm install -g openclaw@latest        # Install OpenClaw
openclaw onboard --install-daemon     # Run setup wizard
openclaw channels login               # Connect your messaging app
openclaw gateway --port 18789         # Start the gateway
openclaw doctor --fix                 # Fix common problems

Where Everything Lives

What	Where
Dashboard	http://127.0.0.1:18789/
Config file	~/.openclaw/openclaw.json
Agent personality	~/.openclaw/workspace/SOUL.md
Agent rules	~/.openclaw/workspace/AGENTS.md
Long-term memory	~/.openclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md
Daily logs	~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md
Skills folder	~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/

Type These in Your Chat

Command	What it does
/models	Switch AI model on the fly
/usage	See how much you've spent
/help	See all available commands

---

Your First Week — In This Order

Before installing: - [ ] Install Node.js v22+ from nodejs.org - [ ] Sign up for an AI service and save your API key

Installation: - [ ] Run npm install -g openclaw@latest - [ ] Run openclaw onboard --install-daemon and follow the wizard (paste API key through Notes!) - [ ] Start the gateway: openclaw gateway --port 18789 - [ ] Confirm the dashboard loads at http://127.0.0.1:18789/

Remote access (optional): - [ ] Install Tailscale on your Mac and iPhone, same account - [ ] Set sleep prevention: System Settings → Battery → Options

Day one in chat — in this exact order: - [ ] First message ever: "Read BOOTSTRAP.md and walk me through it" - [ ] Introduce yourself — your background, goals, how you like to work - [ ] Write SOUL.md: "Let's write your SOUL.md together, ask me questions" - [ ] Write AGENTS.md: "Let's write our AGENTS.md using a template, walk me through it" - [ ] Write USER.md: "Let's fill in USER.md, ask me about myself" - [ ] Write HEARTBEAT.md: "Let's write our HEARTBEAT.md" - [ ] Set up your morning brief

Week one — once the basics feel stable: - [ ] Set up tiered model routing to cut costs - [ ] Install QMD memory - [ ] Set up Jentic for API key security - [ ] Build your first skill for something you do repeatedly - [ ] Set up daily backups: "Create a daily backup of our workspace files" - [ ] Pick ONE main workflow and per