OpenClaw setup, end to end — every step explained

Go to theclawd.com. Click "Get The Clawd". Sign in with Google. We use Google sign-in because it's the fastest verified identity on the web — no email-confirmation rabbit hole.

You'll land on the deploy dashboard with one screen, four fields. No 12-step onboarding wizard.

OpenClaw runs on the model you choose. The Clawd ships with all flagship models pre-configured:

• Claude 4.6 Sonnet — best general-purpose default. Long context, strong tool use.
• Claude 4.6 Opus — most capable, also most expensive. Use for deep reasoning.
• GPT-5 — strong creative writing, multimodal.
• Gemini 3 Pro — huge context window (2M tokens), great for document tasks.
• Kimi K2.5 / GLM-5.1 — open-weight options for privacy-sensitive workloads.

Pick one as default. You can switch per-message later by typing /model gpt5 in any chat.

The Clawd supports six channels out of the box. Start with the one you use most:

• Telegram — Get a bot token from @BotFather (5 sec: /newbot, name it, copy token). Paste into The Clawd dashboard. Bot is live.
• WhatsApp — Scan the QR code that appears in the dashboard with WhatsApp on your phone (Settings → Linked Devices). Done.
• Discord — Add the OpenClaw bot to your server, grant permissions.
• Slack — One-click OAuth install to your workspace.
• Signal / iMessage — Available, slightly more setup (bridge required).

You can add more channels later. The same agent, same memory, talks across all of them.

The big button at the bottom. Click it. The Clawd:

• Spins up your dedicated workspace on jarvis.md infrastructure
• Loads OpenClaw 2026.5+ with default skills
• Wires your selected channel(s)
• Activates the auto-restart watchdog
• Schedules daily encrypted backups

Total deploy time: ~12 seconds. You'll see "The Clawd is running" with your dashboard URL.

Open Telegram (or whichever channel you wired). Find your bot. Send: hello.

Your Clawd will reply with a brief intro and ask what you want to work on. Try:

• "Summarize my Gmail inbox from today."
• "Book a 30-min slot with @maya next week."
• "Open the GitHub repo, find any failing tests, and propose fixes."

If a request needs a permission you haven't granted (e.g. Gmail, Calendar, GitHub), it'll send you the OAuth link inline. Tap, approve, done.

Your Clawd remembers conversations by default. To make it "know you" faster:

• Connect Notion / Obsidian — your notes become long-term memory.
• Connect WHOOP / Oura / Apple Health — biometric context for proactive nudges.
• Install community skills — Browse the Clawd Market for done-for-you skills (sales, customer support, daily brief, etc).

That's the entire OpenClaw setup. Total time: under 60 seconds. No terminal, no SSH, no Docker, no curses.