This tutorial aims to help you bootstrap your first OpenClaw instance.

You definitely should think “small” to start with, and iterate over time. One of the biggest pitfalls when setting up this kind of tech, is giving up due to complexity.

Once you have a basic setup, then you can start creating a specific goal for it (e.g. marketing, coding, etc). This tutorial aims to lighten the mental load of the initial setup.

MacBook running OpenClaw in a ClawBox terminal
MacBook running OpenClaw in a ClawBox terminal

1. Stack & Requirements

There are a lot of options: where to install ClawBot? How? With what AI model? How does the AI talk to you? etc. Despite trying to keep things simple, we still have choices to make.

Important criteria:

  • The OpenClaw instance should be sandboxed and not have access to critical information.
  • If you don’t like the final result, it should be easy to destroy and uninstall what you have done (modulo some $ spent).

So here come the requirements.

Your Macbook with ClawBox. It installs OpenClaw inside a virtual machine so you can run it more “safely” from your device.

  • We’ll cover this part in the next section.

MiniMax, because it’s a good challenger to Claude and OpenAI (and I wanted to try something else).

  • Create an account on MiniMax platform.
  • Buy some credits (10-20$), don’t enable auto-billing.
  • Create an API key (and keep it safe).

Telegram, because it’s the simplest to set up. But let’s be honest, there are better options for privacy. Ideally, have a standalone SIM to use Signal.

  • Open or create your Telegram app.
  • Create a new bot by sending to BotFather the message /newbot and follow the questions. Copy the API key once you have it. And copy the bot name too (ending with _bot).
  • Get your user identifier (so ClawBot knows how to reach out) by opening a conversation with userinfobot. Copy the identifier.

In addition, you need:

  • A good 25 GB available on your machine.

2. Install and set up ClawBox

You first need to download and install ClawBox dependencies.

Please have the package manager Homebrew installed on your computer.

Then, run these commands to install ClawBox:

1
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brew install joshavant/tap/clawbox
clawbox image build && clawbox up

The installation will take some time, as it’ll load and install a good 20 or 25 GB on your disk.

3. Set up OpenClaw

At this point, it should open a Tart VM (a visual interface) allowing you to see your Mac instance which contains OpenClaw. (Default password should be clawbox).

If Tart does not display automatically, try clawbox launch. You can also check whether your instance is already up with clawbox status.

You can either login through Tart, or do it through command line from your source computer: ssh clawbox-1@$(clawbox ip 1).

I recommend keeping the Tart interface (as visible below).

OpenClaw running inside ClawBox and Tart
OpenClaw running inside ClawBox and Tart

3.1 Initial onboarding

OpenClaw requires a minimum setup before being autonomous.

Open a terminal on your ClawBox, and start installing OpenClaw.

Run: openclaw onboard --install-daemon

Here are my responses:

  • Choose “QuickStart”, we’ll configure more later.
  • Model: choose MiniMax, and paste the API key.
  • Chat: choose Telegram, and paste the API key.
  • Skip the other questions (for now), including:
    • The web browser.
    • The skills.
    • The API keys (google, nano banana, etc)
    • The hooks.

3.2 Bootstrap (We start talking)

Now that OpenClaw can understand what you tell it, it should be possible to continue its configuration through natural language.

The terminal should ask you whether to hatch in the TUI (terminal) or open a web browser. Select TUI to start with.

  • It’ll allow you to prompt in the terminal.
  • Depending on the version you use, the experience will differ. So you might have to adapt.
  • If your OpenClaw window closes or has an issue, you can spawn a new one by calling openclaw tui.

First question I asked was What should we start with to configure yourself properly?. It’s generic enough to trigger useful steps (probably from the built-in BOOTSTRAP.md):

Telegram screenshot of OpenClaw talking
I asked my OpenClaw dumb stuff for this screenshot

1. “Who am I”

  • A name
  • What kind of creature (AI is fine, but could be changed to something more creative)
  • The vibe (sharp? Warm? Chaotic? Chill)

I responded: You are Albert, a spirit whose goal is to save me time. Your vibe is “chaotic good.”.

2. “Who are you”

  • Your name and how it should address you.
  • Your timezone.
  • Anything on how to communicate with you.

I responded: My name is Vincent. I'm in the Europe/Paris timezone. Please communicate with me in a straightforward way..

3. How should we stay in touch? (Despite configuring the Telegram API key)

I responded: Use the Telegram integration..

It’ll ask you some questions, such as the API key or even the bot identifier. If it does not ask you for your user identifier, then it’s possible the configuration won’t be complete. In that case, ask it Check if telegram channel is properly configured and if you can reach out to me..

Then I asked Anything else in bootstrap that we forgot? and it triggered some useful questions and configurations to configure the SOUL.md file. I gave it the official template which seemed a good start.

3.3 Secure your OpenClaw

We’re not going deep into the technical details on how to secure your instance. But let’s leverage the tools at our disposal!

Security audit

You can either ask it directly please run a deep security audit, or run this command in another terminal openclaw security audit --deep.

Last but not least, ask it to run a security audit on a weekly basis: Add a weekly task to run a deep security audit. If any warning or error, please send me a concise report..

Updates

You can check and run updates yourself.

And, you can ask it to run a check every week: Please add a cron job to check every week if an OpenClaw update is available. If so, please let me know.

Backups

Last but not least, it’s a good practice to create backups of your OpenClaw. Ideally, the backup should live outside your OpenClaw instance, but that’s a story for another time! In the meantime, you could ask it to create a weekly task: Please add a weekly task to back up OpenClaw in “~/Backups” ; and remind me at least monthly to save it to my personal computer.

3.4 Potential issues

Here is a list of issues I encountered while creating this tutorial.

If you see a gateway problem, you might have to run openclaw gateway install.

4. Additional (and optional) configuration

You already made a big step. There is much more to discover and understand. Over time (within a few months of this article), I’m sure things will get less complicated.

Set up memory search (semantic embeddings)

The default (and basic) search has some limitations. You might want to configure a more complex one. The catch? It costs some money. My advice? Don’t set this up right now, but keep in mind that your OpenClaw instance might hit some memory limitations at some point. In such a case, consider “upgrading”, and ask it to help you configure it.

More to come

I’ll update this section a bit later, once I’ve practiced a bit more with OpenClaw.

5. What to do from now?

Now you have your first OpenClaw instance, congrats!

It’s time to consider what such an AI could do for you. And it’s where it starts getting tricky. It’s hard to understand and formulate such things.

In my case, I decided (like a lot of people) to automate some marketing analysis and creations. This includes:

  • Regularly watch discussions on social media for keywords related to some of my apps. Then list me trending posts on the channel.
  • Create a social media post once a day, so I can post them manually (until I decide to automate everything). This includes an image generated by nano banana 2 from Google.

A good choice is one that saves you time. So try to figure out what is currently taking a toll on you!