openclaw claws

A Claw is a versioned setup for one new OpenClaw agent. It can describe the agent configuration, workspace files, skills, plugins, MCP servers, and cron jobs that agent needs. A Claw does not replace or modify an existing agent.

Claws are experimental. Their schema, command output, and lifecycle may change. Enable the command surface explicitly:

export OPENCLAW_EXPERIMENTAL_CLAWS=1

The current CLI reads a local package directory or grouped JSON manifest. Publishing, searching, and installing whole Claws through ClawHub are a separate registry track and are not part of this command surface yet.

Create a grouped manifest

Start with a version 1 JSON manifest:

{  "schemaVersion": 1,  "agent": {    "id": "incident-triage",    "name": "Incident triage",    "tools": { "deny": ["exec"] }  },  "workspace": { "bootstrapFiles": {} },  "packages": [],  "mcpServers": {},  "cronJobs": []}

Package and workspace paths must remain inside the package root. Manifests are limited to 1 MiB, package metadata to 256 KiB, and workspace sources enforce separate per-file and aggregate limits. Workspace sources also reject symlinked parents.

Inspect and preview

Validate the source without planning local changes:

openclaw claws inspect ./incident-triage.claw.json

Preview all proposed lifecycle actions:

openclaw claws add ./incident-triage.claw.json --dry-run --json

The plan reports the derived agent and workspace, every proposed action, prerequisites, blockers, and distinct capability escalations. Capability records show the exact package, MCP, scheduled-work, sandbox, tool, or heartbeat effect and are included in plan integrity. Use --agent-id or --workspace to preview alternatives when package defaults collide with local state.

This initial experimental command is read-only. claws add requires --dry-run and does not create the agent or mutate OpenClaw state.

Command reference

Use --json for experimental machine-readable output.

See also

• Agents
• Skills
• Plugins