OpenClaw Tutorial for Beginners: How to Use & Set up OpenClaw (ClawdBot)

- This is OpenClaw and it might be the most exciting AI tool I've ever seen.

It's a personal AI assistant that you can text from your phone that remembers everything you ever told it, and that runs 24/7 even while you sleep, managing your calendar, drafting emails, doing research, all on its own.

Now, I've used plenty of AI assistants: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, all of them, and they're pretty powerful, but they all have the same major limitation, they're places you go to.

You open a website, you ask something and you get an answer.

Then you leave, close the tab and it's gone.

It can't check on things for you overnight.

It can't message you when something important happens, it just waits for you to come back.

But OpenClaw is different.

It lives in your pocket inside apps you already use, and it keeps working even when you are not there.

People are buying dedicated computers just to run this.

It's one of the most hyped tools in AI right now, and outside of tech circles, almost nobody knows about it yet.

So this is your chance to get ahead.

In this video, I'll explain exactly what OpenClaw is and why it's such a big deal.

Then I'll show you how to set it up step by step, deploying it to a server, connecting an AI model, and linking it to Telegram so that you can message it from your phone.

We'll even test it out with some real tasks so that you can see exactly what it's capable of.

And we're doing all of this without writing a single line of code.

Let's start with what OpenClaw actually is.

So to understand why OpenClaw is such a big deal, let's talk about how AI assistants work right now.

Most AI tools today are like visiting a library.

You go there, you get what you need, and then you leave.

When you're gone, nothing happens.

ChatGPT doesn't check your email while you sleep.

Claude doesn't remind you about meetings.

They only work when you're sitting in front of them.

And all of your conversations live on someone else's servers.

But OpenClaw flips all of that.

First, it runs on your server.

You own it, your conversations, your data, your rules.

Second, it doesn't wait for you to visit a website.

It lives inside apps you already use, like WhatsApp, Telegram Slack Discord whatever.

You just text it the same way you'd text a friend.

It's already there in your pocket whenever you need it.

And third, this is a big one, it runs 24/7 even when you are not using it, even while you sleep.

This means it can actually reach out to you when something matters.

So what does that look like in practise?

You can message it and say, "Check my calendar and find a free slot this week," done.

"Draught or reply to that email from my boss." Done.

"Research flights to Tokyo. Gimme the best options."

Also done.

But because it runs all the time, you can also set things to happen automatically.

Some people have OpenClaw send them a morning briefing every single day.

It checks their calendar, checks the weather, scans their emails for anything urgent, maybe even replying on their behalf.

Then sends a summary to Telegram at 7:00 AM before they're even out of bed.

They didn't ask for it that morning. It just does it.

That's the difference.

The other big thing is memory and more importantly memory that you control.

ChatGPT and Claude have memory features now, sure, but it's limited and it's stored on their servers.

They decide how much contact you get.

With OpenClaw, you own the memory.

It builds context over time and it learns your projects, your preferences and your style.

You can message it from Telegram in the morning, then pick up the same conversation from your laptop at night.

It knows exactly where you left off because the memory lives on your server, not theirs.

And because it's open source, you have complete control.

You choose which AI model powers it, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, whatever you prefer.

And you can even change the model periodically.

You can extend it with what they call skills.

Basically plugins that let it do new things.

And there's a huge community constantly improving it and adding new features.

Now, one quick thing.

If you search for this online, you might see it called ClawdBot or Moltbot.

It's the same project, it's just been renamed a couple of times.

OpenClaw is the current name.

So why is everyone excited about this?

Well, because this is what AI assistants were always supposed to be.

Not a website you visit when you remember to, but something that's always there.

Always learning, always working in the background.

Is one of the fastest growing open source projects right now.

People are literally buying Mac Minis and dedicated servers just to run it.

And the best part is you can set this up yourself today, which brings us to how we're actually going to do that.

You can run OpenClaw two ways: locally on your own computer or on a cloud server/ a VPS.

Both work, but for most people, a VPS is the better choice.

Here's why. First, it's always on.

The whole point of OpenClaw is that it runs 24/7 even while you sleep, right?

That morning briefing we talked about, well, it can't happen if your laptop is closed.

A VPS runs around the clock.

Second, security, OpenClaw is powerful, it can run commands, access files, take actions, and running that on your personal computer with all of your personal data is risky.

A VPS keeps everything isolated.

If something goes wrong, it's contained.

It can't touch your personal machine.

And third, you don't need extra hardware.

People are buying Mac Minis just to run this, but you don't have to.

A VPS only costs a few bucks a month.

For this tutorial I'm using Hostinger, they have a one click docker template specifically for OpenClaw, no command line, no config files, just click deploy and it works.

It also comes with built-in security, firewall rules, Docker isolation, and if you get stuck, there's an AI assistant in the dashboard that can help you troubleshoot.

Alright, let's set it up.

Use the link on screen or in the description below, that'll take you to Hostinger's OpenClaw page and auto apply a 10% discount.

When you land on this page, go ahead and click Deploy.

That takes you to your cart.

You can see OpenClaw is already selected for auto deploy.

Now first things first, select your billing period, 24 months, give you the best rate.

It works out to just a few bucks per month for a server running 24/7.

Now, one recommendation, turn on daily auto-backups.

OpenClaw is powerful and it can actually make changes to your server configuration on its own.

If anything ever goes sideways, backups let you roll back to a stable version, which is worth a peace of mind.

At the bottom, you can choose a server location.

Hostinger auto selects the lowest latency region for you, but you can change it if you prefer a specific location.

You'll see in the order summary at the upper right that the coupon code is already applied.

That's the discount from my link.

When everything looks good, click Continue.

Next, create an account with Google or email.

After that, you'll land on the checkout page.

Go ahead and add your payment details and complete the purchase.

After payment, you'll land on the OpenClaw configuration screen.

There are four fields here.

The first one, OpenClaw Gateway Token, is auto-generated for you.

This is important.

Click the I icon to reveal it, then copy it and save it somewhere secure, you'll need this to log in.

And don't share this with anyone, this is basically a password for your OpenClaw.

The other two fields are for API keys, Anthropic and OpenAI.

You need at least one of these to give OpenClaw a brain.

I'm going to use Anthropic, so let's grab that key.

Open a new tab and go to platform.claude.com.

For simplicity, I've left a link in the description below if you just wanna click on it.

Next, create an account or sign in, I'll use my Google account.

If you're just signing up for the first time, you'll need to go through a short onboarding process providing some personal information.

Once you're all logged in, you'll land on this page here.

Now, before you can create an API key, you need to add credits.

Either click Buy Credits at the upper middle or go to billing in the menu and add at least $5.

This is what pays for the AI.

OpenClaw uses Claude under the hood and you pay per use.

Now this is pay as you go.

Every time OpenClaw thinks, responds or takes action, it uses a little bit of credit.

For most people, that's a few dollars per month, but if you set up automations that run constantly or if something gets stuck in the loop, it can add up fast.

There are stories of people waking up to unexpected bills because an agent ran all night trying to fix something it couldn't fix.

So start small.

Keep an eye on your usage in the Anthropic dashboard.

Once you understand how much your workflows cost, you can scale up from there.

Alright, once credits are added, go ahead And click to get an API key.

Name it something like OpenClaw and click Create API Key.

You'll get a popup that displays your API Key.

Now again, this is like a password, so don't share it with anyone.

And they won't show you this ever again, so make sure to store it somewhere safe.

Go ahead and just click the Copy button to copy it to your clipboard.

Then go back to your Hostinger tab and paste the key in to the Anthropic API Key Field.

Now click Deploy.

You'll be presented with a survey, but you can just scroll down to the bottom and click Skip.

Now here you can see you're on the projects page within your Docker manager in the hosting or dashboard, and there's a spinning indicator up at the top right that shows your project is being deployed.

This can take a couple of minutes, so I'll go ahead and fast forward to when it's done.

Okay, after a few minutes, we have a green check mark and it says that it's running.

To access the OpenClaw web interface, click on the purple port number link in the bottom left.

Now if you see a screen like this prompting you to add your OpenClaw gateway token, go ahead and paste it in and follow the prompts.

If not, I'll show you how to add your gateway token manually.

This is your OpenClaw dashboard.

Now, before we can do anything with it, we need to finish setting it up.

Click into Overview under Control on the left side panel.

The first thing it wants is your gateway token, that's the one we saved earlier.

Paste it in and click Connect.

You should see connected in the status on the right side under Snapshot.

Alright, we're in.

Now that we're connected, let's talk to our bot and see what happens.

Click back to the Chat using the menu in the left side and then send a message.

I'll just say hello and then Send.

When you deploy a fresh OpenClaw instance, like the one we have here, it comes with a bootstrap file installed, basically meaning it's going to ask you a bunch of questions when you first message it to get the context of who you are, who it is, and what the purpose of working together is.

So if it asks you all these questions, go ahead and just answer them and complete the onboarding process with it.

So for example, it says, "Who am I?"

I'll say, "You are Hex, I am Matt," and I'll send a message.

It responds, it says it likes its name, it says, "What's the vibe here?

Am I buttoned up? Have more personality?"

You can give your bot a personality.

Let's just say, "You are a helpful robot."

and it asks about a time zone.

So I'll say, "US Central time."

And just like that, it knows who I am and who it is.

The context is saved to the files on the server, and it'll remember this in every future conversation.

Now it says before it deletes the bootstrap file, it asks if we wanna run a health check and if we wanna communicate on any other channels.

So I recommend going ahead and doing the health check and we'll set up new channels in a minute.

So let's say, "Yes to the health check," and click Send.

After a second, you can see it did some initial checks, but then it ask a question at the bottom for me here saying, "Can I run some read-only checks to see what we're working with?"

So let's say, "Yep, go for it."

So here I've got a message saying that it read a check.

It figured out what it his environment is and it can checks a few more things and it's just asking some additional questions.

So anyway, I'm gonna set this down for now.

Let's go ahead and set up our communication channel.

Now we can chat with OpenClaw right here in the browser, but the whole point of this tool is that it lives in your pocket.

You shouldn't have to come back to this dashboard every time you wanna talk to it.

So let's fix that.

We're going to connect OpenClaw a Telegram so we can message it from our phone from anywhere.

Alright, quick note, if you're not familiar with Telegram already, it's a free messaging app similar to WhatsApp or iMessage.

You can use it on your phone or desktop.

OpenClaw supports several messaging platforms, but Telegram is the easiest to set up because it has built-in support for bots.

If you don't have it yet, go ahead and download it from your phone's app store and create an account.

I also recommend setting up Telegram on your computer because that makes it easier to complete the telegram linking process here in OpenClaw.

I've added Telegram links in the description below so you can quickly find the right download pages.

Now instead of manually editing configuration files, we're just going to ask OpenClaw to set it up for us.

So in the OpenClaw chat, we'll say, "Let's set up Telegram."

And here you can see OpenClaw has come back responding with detailed instructions on how to set up Telegram.

Now this message might not look the exact same for you, but the instructions should be pretty similar.

It starts by saying, "Open Telegram and search for @BotFather."

Now you can do this manually, or I've provided a link in the description below that you can simply click to activate a conversation with the BotFather, I'll show you what this looks like.

I'll open a new tab and go to the new link.

When you land on this page, you should be prompted to Open Telegram.

So go ahead and just click that button and it'll take you directly to a conversation with the BotFather where you can click start at the bottom.

Right away, the BotFather will give you some commands you can send, and the one we wanna send is the new bot command.

So go ahead and type / and you can type new bot or it'll show you a bunch of commands you can click.

So I'll select /newbot.

It'll ask for a name for the bot.

So let's go ahead and call it Hex.

You can give your bot whatever name you want and now it needs a username.

Now the username needs to be unique in the Telegram ecosystem and it has to end with bot.

So let's come up with some long name here to make sure that it's a unique one.

I'm calling mine MattOpenClawHeAssistantBot.

And there we go.

It says, "Congratulations on your new bot," and it provides a link where we can open a conversation directly by clicking on it.

Now first it gives us an API token that we need to copy over and paste into our OpenClaw conversation.

It's right in the middle of the message, so we'll copy that, return to OpenClaw, and then paste that in the chat.

Now again, this is an API token.

This is basically a password, so keep it secret and don't share this with anyone.

That's why I've got mine blurred out.

And after a minute I get a message saying it's done.

Telegram is configured and OpenClaw is restarting.

Now we need to pair it.

So it says, "Open Telegram, search for your bot and then hit start or send any message."

And then the first time you message it, it'll ask you to pair.

So let's go through that pairing process.

Now we'll go to Telegram, and since the BotFather provided us a direct link, let's click on that and then click Start.

Here it says there's a pairing code.

So what we'll do is we'll copy that pairing code and provide it to our OpenClaw bot back in the OpenClaw control panel.

And now it says we're in and Telegram is approved.

So we can send a message in Telegram to confirm that everything's working.

Here I am in the mobile version of Telegram, and let's just send a quick test message.

We'll say, "Hey there," and send it.

You can see in Telegram at the top it says, "Hex is typing," and we've received our message in Telegram, and you can see at the same time, we've also received that same message in the chat in the OpenClaw gateway dashboard.

So essentially we're having the same conversation in either place, which means now the conversation doesn't just live on our dashboard, we can take it with us anywhere we go by using our Telegram app.

This is great.

OpenClaw works great right outta the box, but the real power comes from skills, plugins that teach it new capabilities.

There's a whole library of community-built skills that you can browse.

Just ask the bot, "What skills are available?"

Or, "Show me popular skills."

You can also browse ClawHub directly.

That's the official skills marketplace.

There are thousands of skills covering everything from productivity tools to smart home control to development workflows.

The installation process is different for each skill.

Some are simple, some require setting up external accounts or credentials.

But here's the key thing, you don't need to figure it out yourself.

Just find a skill you want and ask the bot to instal it.

It'll walk you through whatever steps are necessary.

The skill most people instal first is GOG.

It connects OpenClaw to your entire Google workspace, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, Docs, et cetera.

Let's set it up.

In Telegram, let's say let's instal and set up GOG.

Ah, and here it's actually thinking I'm talking about the GOG gaming platform.

So let's clarify here.

Sorry, I meant the GOG Google Workspace skill.

And after a few minutes we can see that it already went ahead and installed it, but now we need to add some credentials.

These credentials will allow us to actually connect to our Google Cloud account.

So it says to go to console.cloud.google.com.

If it provides the link, go ahead and click on it, otherwise, you can just enter that URL directly in your browser.

We'll land on the Google Cloud page and you might need to agree to some terms of service and potentially log into your account.

We'll go ahead and click Select a Project in the upper left and then say New Project.

Let's give the project a name.

We'll call it OpenClaw.

And then click Create.

You'll get a notification saying the create project was successful.

Go ahead and click Select Project.

And now we need to enable our APIs.

So on the left side, click on APIs and Services.

And then in the top of this page, click Enable APIs and Services.

You'll wanna go through and enable APIs for any of the Google tools you want OpenClaw to have access to.

So I'll go through and enable the APIs for Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, Docs and People API for Contacts.

I'll show you how to do one of these and then you can do all the rest on your own.

Here's Gmail, so we'll search for Gmail, it prompts us with Gmail API.

We'll select that.

Then we'll click Gmail API from the list.

Then click Enable.

Great. We've got one.

So we'll click Back.

We'll click Enable APIs and Services, and then repeat this process for each of the additional apps.

All right, we've jumped ahead into the future here and I've gone through and enabled all of those different APIs.

If you scroll down the Enabled APIs and Services page, you can see all of the different APIs that you've visited and enabled with the purple links in the list below.

Now we need to create some credentials.

On the left side of the API and Services page, click on credentials in the menu.

Then at the top of the page, click Create Credentials, then select OAuth Client ID.

If it tells you that you need to configure your consent screen first, go ahead and follow that process by clicking Configure your Consent Screen and click Get Started.

First, we'll give the app a name, we'll call it OpenClaw.

And then from the dropdown, select your user support email.

This can just be your email.

Click Next.

Next, for audience, select External and click Next.

For contact information, you can just enter your email address again, then click Next.

Then click the checkbox to finish and Continue and click Create.

Okay, now in the upper left hamburger menu, we can go back and select APIs and Services and then click Credentials.

Again, click create credentials at the top and click OAuth Client ID.

Select Application Type, and then select Desktop App.

And you can give your app a name.

We'll call it OpenClaw.

Then click Create.

Next, download the JSON file it provides, and then click and drag that JSON file into Telegram and send it to your bot.

Now the bot says the credentials are stored and it needs to authorise our account, and it asks for the Gmail address.

So I'll provide the one we used.

It'll provide a link to click to authorise the account.

But before you do that, read through the entire instructions.

This is important.

It'll try to redirect to local hosts and fail to load the page.

And that's the expected result.

So what we're going to do is copy the entire URL from the address bar and paste it back here in the conversation.

Alright, having read those instructions, let's click the link.

We'll choose the account.

We'll copy this URL and paste it back in Telegram.

Here it says the app is in testing mode so we'll need to add this email address as a test user first.

So we'll click to go back to Google Cloud console, log in, in the upper left hamburger menu, select APIs and Services, and then select OAuth Consent Screen.

From here, we'll click Audience on the left side.

Scroll down to the Test User section, click Add Users, and then enter your email account, click Save.

And now we'll try the authorization again in Telegram.

Test user added, let's try again.

All right, again, click the authorised Google account link, Open, select the account and it'll say, "Google hasn't verified this app," with the big button saying Back to Safety, but we want to actually click Continue.

We're the developer, so there's no need to worry here.

Next click Continue to allow OpenClaw to have access.

Click the checkbox to select all.

Scroll down and click Continue.

Now, here's a local host issue that was described to us.

So here, go to your address bar, copy the entire address, return a Telegram and paste it in.

Alright, and now we've got a success message.

Google is all connected to our bot and it has access to be able to work with any of these tools on our behalf.

Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Contacts, Sheets, and Docs.

So let's put it to work. Let's try a quick test.

We'll say, "What's on my calendar for Thursday?"

And it found that I have lunch with Tim scheduled.

Ooh, but that's actually not going to work.

I need to reschedule with Tim for Friday.

So let's say, "Oh, I actually can't make that.

Please change that to the same time on Friday and send Tim an email apologising.

I have to spend that whole afternoon building automations with my OpenClaw bot."

It sees that there's an email in there, and yeah, that's actually a test email.

So we'll go ahead and say Yes and it's done.

So let's check out the calendar real quick.

Sure enough, the appointment's been moved to Friday, and if I check my test email account, I can see there's an email that it's sent to Tim saying it's really sorry, but I need to spend that afternoon building automations with my new AI assistant.

This is great.

OpenClaw is now following instructions when I prompt it, but now here's where it gets really interesting.

Let's set up a cron job.

A cron job is just a scheduled task, something that runs automatically at a set time without you having to ask.

So let's go back to Telegram and we'll say, "Every day at 7:00 AM check the weather for Chicago, check my calendar to see what I have coming up.

Find me an inspirational quote and send me that as a daily briefing in Telegram."

It confirms that the automation has been created and what I'll get.

And it offers to run a test so we can see what it looks like.

So let's say "Yes," and there's the daily briefing.

That's the difference between an AI you visit and an AI that works for you.

Now you've got your own AI assistant running 24/7, accessible right on your phone.

I recommend starting simple, ask questions, give it small tasks, let it learn about you.

And once you're comfortable, there's so much more you can do.

To get started, use the link in the description below to get 10% off your hosting your VPS.

The discount is already applied. Thanks for watching.