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The native runtime is the fastest way to a working team. Clawboo’s clawboo-native harness talks to provider SDKs directly — no OpenClaw Gateway, no extra software, nothing to install beyond npx. By the end of this guide you’ll have a two-agent team (a Team Lead and a Coder) live in group chat, ready to take on tasks. If you want the OpenClaw Gateway path instead, see Quickstart — OpenClaw.
This guide covers v0.2.0 (commit 03b206a). The current npm latest is clawboo@0.1.9, so npx clawboo downloads 0.1.9 until the v0.2.0 tag is published. The native-first onboarding described here is part of v0.2.0; see Known Issues.

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Prerequisites

  • Node.js 22 or newer — Clawboo’s engines field requires node >=22.0.0.
  • A provider API key for one of: Anthropic (sk-ant-…), OpenAI (sk-…), or OpenRouter (sk-or-…). If you use local Ollama models, no key is needed — just have Ollama running.
  • No OpenClaw, no Gateway, no global install required.

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Steps

1

Launch Clawboo

Open your terminal and run:
npx clawboo
The CLI prints the Clawboo banner, does a quick informational probe of the OpenClaw Gateway port (localhost:18789), starts the bundled dashboard server, then opens your browser at the discovered URL.Expected result: your terminal shows Dashboard started and Clawboo opened at http://localhost:18790 (or the next free port in 18790–18809). The onboarding wizard appears in your browser because this is a fresh machine.
2

Click Get Started

The welcome screen shows the Clawboo wordmark, the tagline “Your AI agents, visible.”, and a single Get Started button.Click Get Started.Expected result: the wizard advances to the runtime-choice step.
3

Choose the native runtime

The wizard asks “How do you want your agents to run?” and presents a grid of runtime cards. The Clawboo Native card appears first and is marked Recommended, with the note “Paste an API key and your team is ready in ~60 seconds.”Below a divider labelled “Or bring your own runtime” you’ll also see cards for OpenClaw, Claude Code, Hermes, and Codex — those lead to their own setup flows.Click the Clawboo Native card.Expected result: the wizard advances to the provider connect step.
4

Pick a provider and paste your key

The Connect Clawboo Native step shows three provider pills at the top — Anthropic (selected by default), OpenAI, and OpenRouter. Select your provider, then paste your API key into the API Key field. The eye icon toggles key visibility.If you’re using a local model, click “Use a local model with Ollama — no key needed” to hide the key field entirely.
Select the Anthropic pill and paste a key starting with sk-ant-….
Optionally, click Test connection. Clawboo makes one authenticated request to your provider’s models endpoint with an 8-second timeout. The key is never stored, logged, or echoed back during this test — it’s used only for verification.Expected result: if you ran the test, you see “Key works” in green (or a specific error message in red). The Create my team button becomes active once a key is present or Ollama is selected.
Testing your key is optional but recommended — it catches a mistyped key before any state is written.
5

Create your team

Click Create my team.Clawboo does two things in order:
  1. Stores your key. The key is written into an encrypted, at-rest vault under the env-var slot for your chosen provider — never to a plaintext file, never returned in any API response.
  2. Seeds a starter team. A team named “My First Team” is created with two clawboo-native agents: a Team Lead (configured to coordinate by delegating through the durable board) and a Coder specialist. Both share Clawboo’s memory. The Team Lead uses a capable model (e.g. claude-sonnet-4-6 on Anthropic) and the Coder uses a leaner one (e.g. claude-haiku-4-5). The “Know Your Team” introduction flow is pre-satisfied so you land straight in chat.
Expected result: the button shows “Setting up…”, then the wizard advances to the “Your team is ready” confirmation screen.
6

Open your dashboard

The final screen — “Your team is ready” — shows your two seeded agents, a note that they share one memory, and a note that you can add other runtimes (Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, OpenClaw) as peers at any time.Click Open my dashboard.Expected result: you enter the dashboard in native mode — no Gateway, no GatewayClient — and land directly in your new team’s group chat. Type your first message to get started.

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What you should see

The dashboard opens with “My First Team” selected and its group chat in view. The agent-list column shows Team Lead and Coder. You can start chatting with the team immediately. Once you send a task and the team starts collaborating, the space looks like this:

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What just happened

Choosing the native runtime connected your provider key to clawboo-native and seeded a two-agent team into SQLite — the registry of record for which agents and teams exist. No OpenClaw Gateway was involved at any point. The Team Lead is wired to coordinate work by delegating tasks onto the board — the durable, race-free kanban that is the source of truth for team coordination — rather than doing everything itself. The Coder picks up those delegated tasks and reports results back.

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Next steps

First Team

Delegate a task in group chat and watch board updates happen in real time.

Dashboard Tour

Understand Atlas, the Ghost Graph, the Board, and every nav panel.

Native Runtime

Dive deeper into how the native runtime works with providers.

Connect More Runtimes

Add Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, or OpenClaw alongside native agents.