OpenClaw: Beginner to Expert

OpenClaw is an open-source, local-first personal AI assistant, created by Peter Steinberger. This book provides a comprehensive guide from getting started to production deployment, with deep dives into the underlying mechanisms and implementation principles.

Highlights

Note: this English page is currently an overview. The full chapter-by-chapter content is maintained in Chinese; for complete reading, use the Chinese README and table of contents.

Hands-on: Build a minimal working loop from scratch, with ready-to-use configuration templates
Deep Dives: Detailed analysis of Gateway, Agent Loop, tool system, sessions and memory
Production-Ready: Focus on reliability, security hardening, monitoring and troubleshooting

Target Audience & Prerequisites

Target Audience: Individual users interested in AI agents, AI application developers, LLM engineers, system architects, etc.
Prerequisites: Basic backend development familiarity is expected, such as Node.js or Python fundamentals. If you are new to LLMs and AI agents, see AI Beginner Guide and Agentic AI Guide.

Book Structure

Part

Chapters

Overview

Part 1: Getting Started

Ch 1–4

Overview, setup, first conversation, configuration & model access

Part 2: Advanced Usage

Ch 5–8

Tools & skills, context memory, multi-agent collaboration, automation & ops

Part 3: Internals & Engineering

Ch 9–12

Gateway protocol, Agent Loop internals, reliability, plugin extensions

Part 4: Practice & Optimization

Ch 13–16

Case studies, performance & cost optimization, troubleshooting, AI ecosystem integration

Appendix

—

Glossary, config templates, troubleshooting checklist, API reference, command cheatsheet, version mapping, further reading, environment self-check tool, naming history, volatile facts table

How to Read

Online

Local Preview

This repository uses mdPress for building. For local preview:

brew tap yeasy/tap && brew install mdpress
mdpress serve

Other Markdown previewers can be used as auxiliary tools, but they are not the standard build chain for this repository.

5-Minute Quick Start

New to OpenClaw? Just three steps:

Install (1 min): curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash -s -- --no-onboard (locked-down environments should download and inspect the script first, or use the official manual/npm path)
Initialize (2 min): openclaw onboard --install-daemon → follow the wizard to configure your model API key and install the background service
Chat (2 min): Run openclaw dashboard, type "hello" in the Control UI chat, receive an AI response — you're done! 🎉

See Chapter 2: Setup and Chapter 3: First Conversation.