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OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent platform for building assistants that can use tools, connect to apps like Slack, and run structured workflows.
This beginner setup guide walks you through how to install OpenClaw, what you need before you start, and how to get your first assistant running.
What is OpenClaw?
OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent platform that lets you build and run personal AI assistants connected to tools like Slack, with web search and custom skills built in. Before you start the OpenClaw setup, you’ll need a Claude subscription (Pro or higher) and a Slack workspace.
Time to complete: ~20 minutes · Skill level: Beginner
OpenClaw Setup: Requirements Before You Start
- A Claude subscription (to authenticate the agent)
- A Slack workspace where you can create apps
- Slack can be replaced with Telegram or your choice of communication interface, and in this guide, we will use Slack
- Node.js installed on your machine
- A Brave Search API key (optional but recommended)
Step-by-Step OpenClaw Setup Guide
Step 1: Install OpenClaw
- Visit https://openclaw.ai/
- Copy the installation command for your OS under “Quick Start”
- Create a new project in your IDE (VSCode, Cursor etc.) and run the command in the terminal
- You can just straight up run the code in the default Terminal like Terminal for Mac or CMD for Windows, but having a dedicated project folder will keep things better organised.
- Once you run the command, it will then ask you some onboarding questions, use 🔼/🔽 keys and the enter key to navigate around.
Step 2: Authenticate with Your Claude Subscription
- Start with “Quick Start” and configure your preferences from there
- Then, you will be asked to configure the Model/auth providers. These will power your AI agents. Let’s go with Anthropic for now. Since we already have our Claude account!
For this option, ensure that you already have a Claude subscription!
Generating the ClaudeCode setup token
To get the setup token, in a separate terminal, run
claude setup-tokenIt will then open the browser with a code you can copy and paste. Copy that code and paste it to the same terminal and press enter. Then it will show the session code (starting with sk-ant-oat01-…) in yellow.
- Paste the session code to OpenClaw and give it a name.
- Choose a default model (Sonnet 4.6 is fine for most tasks – we can configure this later anyway)
Step 3: Connect OpenClaw to Slack
The next phase of the OpenClaw setup is connecting your communication channel. Select Slack and give your bot a name (e.g. “Friday”). You’ll need to generate two tokens from the Slack API dashboard: a bot token and an app token. Create a dedicated Slack channel, add your bot to it, and paste the channel ID (not the name) into the OpenClaw setup wizard.
- For our case, since we use Slack in our daily workflows, I’ll go with the Slack option. However, feel free to try other channels out.
- We can give it a name – this name will be the name of the bot. We’ll name it “Friday”.
- Now it is a slightly more complex part – actually connecting it to Slack. To do this, we need to generate a Slack bot token and paste it in the terminal.
Generating the Slack bot token
💡 We will be following instructions from https://docs.slack.dev/app-management/quickstart-app-settings
- First, go to https://api.slack.com/apps?new_app=1 to create a new app. If you haven’t logged in, please log in.
- When the pop-up shows, click on “From a manifest” and choose your desired workspace.
- After this, you need to COPY and paste the manifest OpenClaw has shown in the terminal into the Slack Wizard (step 2 of 3).
- But since we can’t really copy this well, let’s just open up Claude in a split terminal and ask to clean it up for us so that we can copy and paste it to our Slack.
- Copy the full part where it says “Manifest (JSON)” all the way to the last bracket.
- Open up Claude code and ask it to clean it and save it as a .json file. Please the following prompt:
Please clean this json code and save it as slack-manifest.json.
{YOUR COPIED MANIFEST”}
- Once done, it’ll create a separate file called “slack-manifest.json”. Now, we can freely copy this JSON and paste it to the Slack Wizard and hit “Next”.
- Finally, click on “Create” to complete the process.
- Once you’ve successfully completed it, it should show a page of App Credentials.
- Now, on the sidebar, please navigate to “OAuth & permissions” page and click on “Install to [Your Workspace]” under “OAuth Tokens”.
- When you click the install button, it will bring you to a new page. Click “Allow”.
- Once done, you can finally get your bot token and paste it to OpenClaw!
- P.S. Don’t close this yet as we will need the App token as well!
- Next, we need the Slack app token and paste it.
Generating the Slack app token
- In the slack App we just created above, now navigate to the “Basic Information” tab and find “App-Level Tokens” section. There, click on “Generate Token and Scopes”.
- Add a basic name, I’ve called it “friday-socket-token” as this is required to create a socket between OpenClaw and the Slack channel.
- Then, click on “Add Scope” and choose the connections:write option and click “Generate”.
- Then, you’ll get the Token you can copy and paste to OpenClaw.
- Go to your Slack app and create a NEW CHANNEL that you will use to communicate with your OpenClaw bot.
- Make sure to add your OpenClaw bot into the channel!
- Add the slack channels you want your bot to communicate to the terminal.
- ‼️ Use the Slack channel ID, NOT the channel name!
- Here, I made a mistake of using the slack channel name. This caused me some trouble downstream so make sure to use the channel ID!
Step 4: Enable Web Search in Your OpenClaw Setup
We can also configure a search provider for our OpenClaw agent to have web-surfing capabilities. Some options are provided by default, but we can always change it later. For now, we will go with the Brave Search option and get started with $5 per month plan.
Feel free to experiment and do your own research on different search providers. I also think that Tavily search (https://www.tavily.com/ ) is a great contender as well.
Get Brave search API key from https://brave.com/search/api/ and paste it here.
How to generate Brave Search API Key
If you don’t have an account already, create an account at https://brave.com/
On the dashboard sidebar, navigate to “API keys” and click on “Add API key” option.
Once added, you will now have a new key you can copy and paste to OpenClaw.
Step 5: Add Skills to Your OpenClaw Setup
As we have covered in our Claude Code skills series, Skills provide the agent with pre-configured abilities that let’s them do very particular things. To effectively use OpenClaw (or any other agents), skills are a must!
OpenClaw comes with a few skills that it can be configured out of the box.
You can press space to select a skill to install. For simplicity, I’ve selected all skills. When you hit enter, it will then ask you how you’d like to install the skills. I personally like to use pnpm but it does not matter which one you choose too much.
It will prompt you for API keys where necessary. For those, please enter your relevant API keys.
For more available skills for OpenClaw, you can visit:
Step 6: Add Hooks and Launch
The next section is about adding hooks. Hooks are built in “code” that allows the agent to automate a piece of work at particular situations. You can imagine it as like “reading a book” before going to bed or “taking a dog for a walk when waking up”.
OpenClaw provides a few options by default. Enable all of them by toggling with the spacebar and hit enter.
Step 7: Finalising the setup
Now we’re at the final piece. It will then ask you to hatch your bot. We will go with the first option, TUI (Terminal UI) as that is the recommended solution.
This is just a simple process to let OpenClaw understand who you are and just giving a little more information about yourself. You can talk to it just like how you’d talk to Claude or ChatGPT.
Now we are ready (almost)
Step 8: Interacting with OpenClaw
To get started with OpenClaw, ensure that your gateway is running!
Run: OpenClaw Gateway
Once we have successfully onboarded OpenClaw, we can view all its configurations, make chat, and settings from the dashboard. Simply run the following command in the terminal:
openclaw dashboard
Then it will open a new tab for the OpenClaw dashboard.
This is the control UI. You can now start to control everything here.
Step 9: Testing it out
When I send a new message to Friday, it gives the response well! Now we’re good to go.
Common OpenClaw Setup Issues and Fixes
- Token not recognised — make sure you copied the full
sk-ant-oat01-...string with no trailing spaces. - Slack bot not responding — confirm you added the bot to the channel and used the channel ID, not the name.
- Skills failing to install — try switching package managers (npm / pnpm / yarn) if one errors out.
Next steps
Okay so now we’ve installed OpenClaw and we got the basics set up. Well done. Now we just need to figure out what we are actually going to use this for. Tune up for the series and we will be showcasing how we use OpenClaw at Ridio so you can use it in a similar way as well.
Check out our previous posts
👉 How to create a PPT presentation with Claude
👉 Claude Code Tutorial for Beginners – Setup Guide
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