openclaw-cli

A command-line reference for OpenClaw, a tool for running an AI gateway and managing its agents, communication channels, skills, hooks, and automations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to onboard and configure OpenClaw, start or inspect its gateway, manage agents and routing, probe connected channels, and control the gateway as a service.
Why use it?
It gathers the commands needed to set up OpenClaw, check its health, run its gateway, and control its service. This avoids having to remember separate commands for each part of the system.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/irangareddy/openclaw-essentials/openclaw-cli
Any agent
npx skills add irangareddy/openclaw-essentials --skill openclaw-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/irangareddy/openclaw-essentials

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,303 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00024 $0.03303
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.01651
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00661
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00330

Measured yesterday against content hash 564c9e73b2c3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

openclaw-cli scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

openclaw-cli/SKILL.md · 674 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 674 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OpenClaw CLI

Complete reference for openclaw command-line interface operations.

When to Use

Managing OpenClaw gateway, agents, channels, skills, hooks, and automation.

Core Commands

Setup & Onboarding

Initial setup:

# Quick onboarding with daemon install
openclaw onboard --install-daemon

# Setup workspace and config
openclaw setup --workspace ~/.openclaw/workspace

# Interactive configuration
openclaw configure

Health check:

openclaw doctor

Gateway Management

Run gateway:

# Interactive mode
openclaw gateway

# With specific port
openclaw gateway --port 18789

# With tailscale
openclaw gateway --tailscale serve

Gateway service:

# Install as system service
openclaw gateway install

# Control service
openclaw gateway start
openclaw gateway stop
openclaw gateway restart
openclaw gateway status

Gateway health:

openclaw status
openclaw status --deep     # Probe channels
openclaw health

Agent Management

List agents:

openclaw agents list
openclaw agents list --bindings    # Show routing

Add agent:

# Interactive wizard
openclaw agents add <name>

# Non-interactive
openclaw agents add dev \
  --workspace ~/.openclaw/workspace-dev \
  --model claude-sonnet-4.5 \
  --non-interactive

Delete agent:

openclaw agents delete <id>

Set identity:

# From IDENTITY.md
openclaw agents set-identity --agent main --from-identity

# Explicit values
openclaw agents set-identity --agent main \
  --name "MyAgent" \
  --emoji "🤖" \
  --avatar avatars/bot.png

Skills Management

List skills:

openclaw skills list
openclaw skills list --eligible    # Only ready skills
openclaw skills list --json        # JSON output

Skill info:

openclaw skills info <skill-name>

Check eligibility:

openclaw skills check

Hooks Management

List hooks:

openclaw hooks list
openclaw hooks list --eligible
openclaw hooks list --verbose      # Show missing requirements

Read the full file on GitHub · 674 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 674 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A 564c9e73b2c3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

openclaw-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository irangareddy/openclaw-essentials (0 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 3,303 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.