Creating Skills

If you can’t find a skill that does what you need, you can build your own. Custom skills let you extend your bot with any functionality you can think of — from integrating with your own APIs to automating workflows specific to your needs.

What Makes a Skill

At its core, a skill is a package that defines one or more tools for your OpenClaw bot. Each tool has:

• A name and description so the bot knows when to use it
• Input parameters that define what information the tool needs
• Logic that runs when the tool is invoked
• Output that gets returned to the conversation

Skills are installed into the .openclaw directory on your bot’s server and are automatically discovered by OpenClaw.

Getting Started

The best way to learn how to create skills is through the official OpenClaw documentation and the ClawHub community:

1. Browse existing skills on ClawHub — Study how other skills are structured. Many are open source and serve as great templates.
2. Read the OpenClaw skill documentation — The OpenClaw docs cover the skill format, tool definitions, and how to package your skill.
3. Start simple — Build a basic skill with one tool first, test it on your bot, then expand.

Publishing to ClawHub

Once you’ve built a skill, you can share it with the community by publishing it to ClawHub. Published skills become available for anyone to browse and install through the marketplace.

ClawHub handles distribution — when another user installs your skill, it’s automatically downloaded and set up on their bot.

User-Created Skills on UseOpenClaw

Skills you create and add directly to your bot appear as User Created in the Skills drawer on the UseOpenClaw dashboard. These are separate from skills installed through ClawHub:

• They’re visible in the dashboard for reference
• They’re managed directly on your bot (not through the platform’s install/remove flow)
• They’re included in your bot’s auto backups
• They can be exported as part of a full data export