The Claw Report

OpenClaw Usage & Tutorials

Practical guides to get the most out of OpenClaw.

Getting Started

After installing OpenClaw, launch it with:

openclaw start

This opens the Control UI in your browser. From here you can:

  • Type natural-language instructions in the command bar
  • Browse and install skills from ClawHub
  • View task history and logs
  • Configure permissions and security settings

Your First Task

Try something simple to see OpenClaw in action:

"Search for 'best pizza near me' and save the top 5 results to a text file on my desktop."

OpenClaw will:

  1. Open your browser
  2. Perform the search
  3. Extract the top 5 results
  4. Save them as a text file on your desktop

Watch the Control UI to see each step as it happens. You can pause or cancel at any time.

Understanding Skills

Skills are the building blocks of OpenClaw's power. Each skill adds a specific capability — like reading PDFs, managing GitHub repos, or sending Slack messages.

Installing a Skill

# From the command line
openclaw skill install @clawhub/web-scraper

# Or from the Control UI → Skills → Browse ClawHub

Popular Skills

  • web-scraper — Extract structured data from websites
  • file-manager — Organize, rename, and sort files automatically
  • email-assistant — Draft, send, and manage emails
  • code-reviewer — Analyze code and suggest improvements
  • data-analyzer — Process CSV/JSON files and generate summaries

Security note: Always review a skill's source code and permissions before installing. Malicious skills have been found on ClawHub — see our news section for the latest advisories.

Chaining Workflows

OpenClaw's real power comes from chaining multiple actions into automated workflows. You can describe complex multi-step tasks in natural language: 

"Every morning at 9 AM:
1. Check my Gmail for emails from clients
2. Summarize each one in 2 sentences
3. Post the summaries to #client-updates in Slack
4. Mark the emails as read"

OpenClaw breaks this down into sub-tasks, picks the right skills, and executes them in sequence. You can save workflows for reuse: 

openclaw workflow save "morning-brief"
openclaw workflow run "morning-brief"

Power User Tips

  • Be specific — the more detail you give, the better the output. "Summarize this PDF" is okay; "Extract the financial projections table from page 3 of quarterly-report.pdf and export as CSV" is better.
  • Use Docker sandboxing — for untrusted tasks, run OpenClaw in a Docker container to limit system access.
  • Check the logs — the Control UI shows every action taken. If something goes wrong, the log is your first debugging tool.
  • Limit permissions — in Settings → Security, restrict which directories and apps OpenClaw can access.
  • Keep skills updated — run openclaw skill update --all regularly.

Running into issues? See troubleshooting. New to AI concepts? Read the ELI5 explainer.