OpenClaw FAQ — Community Questions Answered

Many users running both side by side report Hermes is more stable with fewer configuration headaches. The safest approach: run both simultaneously on the same test tasks for a week — if Hermes handles your workflows cleanly, the switch is likely worth it. See the OpenClaw vs Hermes comparison and the migration guide for a feature-by-feature breakdown. Source: r/openclaw

OpenClaw connects to email, messaging, GitHub and a shell and acts autonomously on your behalf, so the main risks are an exposed Gateway, open DM or group policies, unvetted skills, and prompt injection from content the agent reads. OpenClaw's own guidance is to run openclaw security audit, keep the Gateway on a loopback bind with token auth, leave DMs on pairing or an allowlist, require a mention in groups, restrict tools, and vet every skill before installing it. See the OpenClaw security guide and the docs' hardened baseline. Source: OpenClaw security docs

When we checked on 2026-09-30 the newest release on OpenClaw's GitHub releases page was 2026.9.7. Before updating, make and verify a full backup (openclaw backup create; a config-only export is not a recovery backup), rehearse with openclaw update --dry-run, and run openclaw doctor --fix afterwards. Installs older than June 2026 must upgrade through 2026.9.5 first. See the update notes and the rollback guide. Source: OpenClaw 2026.9.7 release notes

Both work with OpenClaw. An OpenAI subscription signs in with openclaw models auth login --provider openai, and Ollama's cloud models run through the Ollama provider (see OpenClaw's Ollama docs). Plan prices and usage limits change, so check each vendor's pricing page rather than trusting a forum figure, and measure your own volume first with openclaw gateway usage-cost. Community reports say high-volume background and scheduled work hits subscription message caps sooner than it hits hosted open-weight limits. Source: r/openclaw

For accuracy-critical legal work, a current Claude Sonnet or Opus via the Anthropic API is the top choice — both deliver strong reasoning and handle nuanced document review well. If client data must never leave your network, run Llama 3 70B or Llama 3.3 70B locally via Ollama; these models are competitive on complex tasks and fully air-gapped. Most law offices start with Claude Sonnet via API for ease of setup, then move to local inference once they have validated their workflow. Full model selection guide → Source: r/openclaw

Yes. OpenClaw’s openai provider supports ChatGPT/Codex subscription sign-in, and OpenAI explicitly allows subscription OAuth in tools like OpenClaw: openclaw models auth login --provider openai --set-default. You can also add an OpenAI API key (billed per token) as a separate profile, for example as a backup when you hit subscription limits (OpenClaw docs). See the OpenClaw configuration guide for provider setup steps. Source: r/openclaw

OpenClaw excels at cross-app autonomous tasks — calendar management from email attachments, file operations via chat, monitoring a Google Sheet, and any workflow that spans multiple services. Claude Code and Codex are built for in-editor pair programming inside a codebase. The rule of thumb: use OpenClaw when your agent needs to act across apps autonomously; use Claude Code when you want AI assistance writing or reviewing code in a repo. Detailed comparison → Source: r/openclaw

Run npm install -g openclaw@<previous-version> using the last known-good release from the OpenClaw GitHub releases page. Before rolling back, back up your config: openclaw backup create and save your skills/ directory. After downgrading, pin the version until a patch confirms the issue is resolved. Step-by-step rollback guide → Source: r/openclaw

Never use a single model for your entire OpenClaw workflow — set a cost-efficient default like Haiku 4.5, Gemini Flash Lite 3.1, or GPT-6 Luna, then add task-specific model routing for complex tasks. More expensive models like Opus aren't always better; the right call is to benchmark against your actual workflow. Run openclaw gateway usage-cost to review usage patterns, then configure model routing in your OpenClaw settings. See the OpenClaw configuration guide for model setup steps. Source: r/openclaw

OpenClaw's security docs assume one trusted operator boundary per Gateway and say it is not a hostile multi-tenant boundary for mutually adversarial users. For work use, run it on a dedicated machine or VM away from production systems, keep one Gateway per trust boundary, apply the hardened baseline, restrict tools, vet every skill, and never connect accounts with financial or sensitive data. Check your organisation's policy first: some security teams treat a personal agent on a work machine as an incident. Microsoft Scout is a separate Microsoft product built on OpenClaw technology. See the OpenClaw security guide. Source: OpenClaw security docs

OpenClaw works reliably for file organization, automated email drafting, recurring data lookups, and scheduled summaries — tasks with a clear trigger, predictable inputs, and a defined output. Where users see the most consistent results is in cross-app workflows: pulling data from a calendar, formatting it, and sending a message. Open-ended or strategy-heavy tasks require more oversight and tighter SOUL.md instructions to produce useful output. Real-world use case examples → Source: r/openclaw

OpenClaw errors compound quickly because autonomous agents run multiple tool calls in sequence — a wrong assumption early in a chain can produce several failed follow-up actions before the agent self-corrects. Most debugging time goes into reading tool logs, identifying where the model misunderstood scope, and rewriting SOUL.md instructions to prevent the same mistake. Setting confirmation prompts for destructive actions and limiting task scope in your SOUL.md cuts recovery time significantly. Source: r/openclaw

OpenClaw releases often, and several 2026 releases renamed or retired config keys, so the practical hurdle is migration rather than stability. The Gateway validates config strictly, so an old key can stop it from starting. Run openclaw doctor --fix to migrate renamed and retired settings (it only rewrites single-file configs, not ones split with $include), and note that HEARTBEAT.md is retired in favour of automations. Anything installed before June 2026 must upgrade through 2026.9.5 first. See the configuration guide and the update notes. Source: OpenClaw 2026.9.7 release notes

OpenClaw’s install docs list Node 24.16+ or 26.1+ as the minimum (24.22.1+ or 26.12.1+ is strongly recommended, and release 2026.10.6 requires it) on macOS, Linux or Windows; they don’t publish CPU or RAM minimums. Community guides suggest 2–4 GB of RAM for the Gateway with cloud models; if you're also running a local LLM via Ollama, add the model's VRAM on top. For cloud-model-only setups a $5/month VPS with 2 GB RAM is viable; local inference needs substantially more headroom. Source: community docs and 2026 system requirements guide

This means npm's global bin folder isn't in your shell's PATH. Run npm config get prefix to find the global prefix, then add <prefix>/bin to your .zshrc or .bashrc: export PATH="$PATH:$(npm config get prefix)/bin". Reload with source ~/.zshrc and verify with openclaw --version. On Windows, the npm global bin is usually %APPDATA%\npm — add it to your system PATH via Environment Variables. Source: OpenClaw setup guide

OpenClaw binds its gateway to port 18789 by default on 127.0.0.1. If you see a connection error, run lsof -i :18789 (macOS/Linux) or netstat -ano | findstr 18789 (Windows) to check if another process is using it. To change the port, set gateway.port (for example 18790), or use --port or OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_PORT, in your ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json. Never expose this port to the internet — keep it bound to localhost and use SSH tunneling for remote access. Source: OpenClaw configuration guide

Microsoft Scout, announced June 2, 2026, is an always-on "Autopilot" agent that Microsoft says is "powered by OpenClaw open-source technology". It works across Teams, Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint under its own Entra identity, and is in private preview through Microsoft's Frontier program for GitHub Copilot licence holders. Read the full guide → Source: Microsoft

Every tool definition the model can see is a context cost you pay before typing anything, and several hundred near-identical descriptions raise the cost of each request and make wrong-tool selection more likely. OpenClaw's embedded runs now defer tool schemas behind Tool Search automatically when tools.toolSearch is unset, so the model searches, describes and calls tools on demand; set tools.toolSearch: false to restore direct schemas. You can still trim the catalogue: list and inspect saved servers with openclaw mcp list and openclaw mcp status, remove ones you don't use with openclaw mcp unset, and prefer a few precisely described tools over many overlapping ones. The same mechanic governs skills — the name and description are always in context, the body loads only when a job matches — which is why a vague description is what stops a skill from ever firing. Sources: OpenClaw Tool Search, openclaw mcp; original question from Hacker News