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Creating Custom Skills 🛠

OpenClaw is designed to be easily extensible. “Skills” are the primary way to add new capabilities to your assistant.

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What is a Skill?

A skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file (which provides instructions and tool definitions to the LLM) and optionally some scripts or resources.

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Step-by-Step: Your First Skill

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1. Create the Directory

Skills live in your workspace, usually ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/. Create a new folder for your skill: 
mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/hello-world

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2. Define the SKILL.md

Create a SKILL.md file in that directory. This file uses YAML frontmatter for metadata and Markdown for instructions. 
---
name: hello_world
description: A simple skill that says hello.
---

# Hello World Skill

When the user asks for a greeting, use the `echo` tool to say "Hello from your custom skill!".

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3. Add Tools (Optional)

You can define custom tools in the frontmatter or instruct the agent to use existing system tools (like bash or browser).

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4. Refresh OpenClaw

Ask your agent to “refresh skills” or restart the gateway. OpenClaw will discover the new directory and index the SKILL.md.

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Best Practices

  • Be Concise: Instruct the model on what to do, not how to be an AI.
  • Safety First: If your skill uses bash, ensure the prompts don’t allow arbitrary command injection from untrusted user input.
  • Test Locally: Use openclaw agent --message "use my new skill" to test.

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Shared Skills

You can also browse and contribute skills to ClawHub.