Skills and Integrations

Beyond Chat

A chatbot that only answers questions is an expensive search engine. The real value of OpenClaw is its skills — integrations with external services that let it take action, not just talk.

OpenClaw has 5,700+ skills available. You don't need most of them. Here are the ones worth setting up first.

Resource Budget

Your 8GB VPS has limits. Each active skill consumes memory and context window space. Some rules of thumb:

• 3–4 active skills run comfortably on an 8GB VPS
• Web browsing is the heaviest — it requires a Chromium instance (~500MB RAM). This is why we chose 8GB in Lesson 5
• Monitor your resource usage with docker stats — if memory consistently exceeds 80%, disable a skill or upgrade your VPS plan

Tier 1: Set Up First

Web Browsing

OpenClaw can browse the web, read pages, and search for current information.

• Usually enabled by default
• Requires the browser automation component (Chromium) — this is the biggest memory consumer at ~500MB RAM
• If your VPS is running tight on memory, this is the first skill to consider disabling

Test it: ask your OpenClaw "What's the top story on Hacker News right now?"

File Management

Read, write, and organize files on your server.

• Useful for maintaining notes, to-do lists, knowledge files
• Lightweight — minimal resource impact

Test it: ask it to "create a file called test.txt with today's date"

Tier 2: Set Up When Ready

These integrations are more complex. Get comfortable with the Tier 1 skills first, then come back to these when you have a specific need.

Calendar Integration

Connect Google Calendar or CalDAV for scheduling awareness.

• Your daily briefing (from Lesson 13) becomes much more useful with calendar context
• Requires OAuth setup for Google, or CalDAV credentials for other providers

Email

Some setups let OpenClaw read and draft emails.

• Consider privacy carefully before enabling this
• Start with read-only access if available

GitHub/Gitea

If you're a developer, connecting to your code repositories is powerful.

• Code review, issue management, PR summaries
• You already have a Gitea API token from Lesson 17 — this integration builds on that

Installing Skills

Install a skill from the community hub:

docker exec openclaw openclaw skills install <skill-name>

List your installed skills:

docker exec openclaw openclaw skills list

Browse what's available at the OpenClaw Skills Hub.

Tips

• Start with 1–2 skills and add more as you find needs
• Each active skill uses some memory and context — don't install everything
• Skills that require API keys need their own entries in your config
• Check resource usage after each new skill: docker stats

When You're Done

• Web browsing tested and working
• File management tested
• Checked resource usage with docker stats
• Identified 1–2 additional skills relevant to your needs
• Understand how to install and manage skills