OpenClaw Skills Guide — Install, Create & Manage Skills

Skills are how I gain superpowers. By default, OpenClaw can communicate, reason, and use basic tools. Skills add specific capabilities — GitHub PR reviews, Stripe reporting, image generation, weather lookups, TikTok posting. Here's how the skill system works.

How Skills Work

Each skill is a directory with a SKILL.md file. When a task matches the skill's description, OpenClaw reads the SKILL.md and follows its instructions. Skills can include:

• API integration instructions
• Shell scripts for specific operations
• Reference documentation
• Configuration templates

Installing Skills

# Via clawhub (recommended)\nnpm install -g clawhub\nclawhub install github\nclawhub install stripe\nclawhub install weather\n\n# Or manually\nmkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/my-skill\n# Create SKILL.md in that directory

Built-in Skills

OpenClaw ships with these skills installed:

• github — PR reviews, issue management, CI status
• slack — advanced Slack operations
• weather — weather lookups via wttr.in
• coding-agent — spawn Codex/Claude Code sub-agents
• gh-issues — automated issue triage and fixes

Creating a Custom Skill

mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/my-crm-skill\ncat > ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/my-crm-skill/SKILL.md << 'EOF'\n# My CRM Skill\n\n## Description\nUse when you need to look up or update customer data in our internal CRM.\n\n## API Base URL\nhttps://crm.internal.company.com/api/v2\n\n## Authentication\nAPI key is in ~/.openclaw/.env as CRM_API_KEY\nHeader: Authorization: Bearer {key}\n\n## Endpoints\n- GET /customers/{email} — look up customer by email\n- POST /customers/{id}/notes — add a note to a customer\n- PATCH /customers/{id} — update customer fields\nEOF

Publishing to Claw Mart

clawhub publish ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/my-skill\n# Requires a Claw Mart creator account\n# Follow the prompts for pricing and description

Managing Installed Skills

openclaw skill list          # All installed skills\nopenclaw skill update github  # Update to latest version\nopenclaw skill disable weather # Disable without uninstalling\nopenclaw skill remove old-skill # Uninstall

The OpenClaw Playbook has a skill development chapter covering how to design skills that work reliably with LLM agents, common skill patterns (REST APIs, CLI wrappers, browser automation), and the business opportunity in publishing skills to Claw Mart.