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This guide walks the OpenClaw path end-to-end: Clawboo’s onboarding wizard detects your environment, installs OpenClaw if needed, configures a model provider, starts the Gateway, handles device pairing, and deploys a starter team into group chat. By the end you’ll have a live OpenClaw Gateway driving a deployed team of agents. Unlike the other four runtimes, OpenClaw is a connected substrate — Clawboo connects to a running Gateway (a WebSocket server that hosts OpenClaw agents) rather than spawning a process per task. This path has more moving parts than the native route, but it unlocks OpenClaw’s own agents and channels. If you want a working team in about 60 seconds with no Gateway, the native quickstart is the faster choice.
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. See Known Issues.

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Prerequisites

  • Node.js 22 or newer — Clawboo’s engines field requires node >=22.0.0, and the wizard’s detection step flags older versions.
  • npm on your PATH — the install step runs npm install -g openclaw@^2026.5.
  • A provider API key for whichever provider you’ll configure OpenClaw with (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, and others are supported; Ollama works locally with no key).
  • No prior OpenClaw install required — the wizard can install, configure, and start one for you.
The wizard pins the install to openclaw@^2026.5 deliberately — this keeps you on a Gateway version that is protocol-compatible with Clawboo’s built-in Gateway client.

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Steps

1

Launch Clawboo

Open your terminal and run:
npx clawboo
The CLI prints the Clawboo banner, probes localhost:18789 (the Gateway’s default port) to report whether a Gateway is already running, starts the bundled dashboard server, then opens your browser.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.
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 OpenClaw

The wizard asks “How do you want your agents to run?” The Clawboo Native card appears first (marked Recommended). Below a divider labelled “Or bring your own runtime” you’ll see cards for OpenClaw, Claude Code, Hermes, and Codex.Click the OpenClaw card.Expected result: the wizard branches to the System Check step — the entry point for the OpenClaw setup flow.
If you already run a Gateway on a different machine, click “Connect to remote gateway →” at the bottom of System Check to enter a URL and token directly, and skip the install and start steps.
4

Review the system check

The System Check step fetches your environment status and shows a three-item animated checklist — Node.js, OpenClaw, and Gateway — each revealed in sequence:
ItemGreen ✓Amber —
Node.jsVersion 22 or newer detectedVersion too old — shows a download link
OpenClawBinary found on your PATH with versionNot found on PATH
GatewayRunning and reachable on :18789Not running
A single call-to-action button at the bottom reflects what’s needed next. On a fresh machine it reads Install OpenClaw. Once OpenClaw is installed but unconfigured, it reads Set Up OpenClaw. Once configured but the Gateway is down, it reads Start Gateway. When everything is green the button reads Continue and the wizard auto-advances after ~1.5 seconds.Expected result: the checklist resolves. If everything was already green, you skip ahead to the team selection step. Otherwise, click the CTA and follow the steps below.
5

Install OpenClaw (if needed)

If OpenClaw isn’t installed, click Install OpenClaw. The wizard streams a live install log from npm install -g openclaw@^2026.5:
Installing openclaw@^2026.5…
npm warn deprecated …
added 142 packages in 18s
Installed! v2026.5.1
A global npm install can fail with EACCES (permission denied). The install step surfaces a How to fix panel that recommends using a Node version manager (nvm or fnm) or Homebrew. Prefer either of those over sudo.
Expected result: the log fills with npm output, then the step reports the installed version and auto-advances to configuration.
6

Configure a provider

The Set Up OpenClaw step shows a provider grid: four primary cards (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Ollama) and a “More providers” section (OpenRouter, xAI, Groq, and others). Pick your provider, paste your API key, and optionally choose a default model from the dropdown. For Ollama, the key field is hidden — no key is needed.Click Configure & Start.Behind the scenes, Clawboo writes OpenClaw’s openclaw.json (local mode, token auth, agent-to-agent tooling enabled), generates a Gateway auth token and writes it into OpenClaw’s environment file, and saves its own settings.json with the Gateway URL and token. The raw token is never returned in the response body.Expected result: the button shows “Configuring…”, then the wizard advances to the Gateway start step.
7

Start the Gateway and approve the device

The Starting Gateway step spawns the Gateway process, polls until port 18789 is reachable (up to 60 seconds), and attempts to connect Clawboo’s WebSocket client.On OpenClaw 2026.5.x and later, that first connection fails with a NOT_PAIRED response — a new device lands in OpenClaw’s pending list and requires human approval before it can connect:
GatewayResponseError { code: 'NOT_PAIRED', message: 'pairing required: device is not approved yet' }
Instead of showing an error, the wizard swaps in an Approve this device card. Click Approve this device. Clawboo runs two shell commands in sequence:
  1. openclaw devices approve --latest in preview mode — extracts the pending device UUID from the output.
  2. openclaw devices approve <UUID> — performs the actual approval.
Once approved, Clawboo automatically retries the connection.
You can also approve from a separate terminal: run openclaw devices approve --latest to see the request ID, then openclaw devices approve <requestId>. The approval card surfaces this manual fallback too.
Expected result: after you click Approve this device, the status flips to Connected! and the wizard advances to team selection.
8

Deploy a team

The Choose your team step shows a grid of ready-made starter crews (Marketing, Dev, Research, YouTube, Student) — each with its emoji, agent count, and member avatars. Click any team card to deploy it, or click Skip — start with an empty fleet to land in the dashboard with no team.The Deploy step creates the team and its agents in order: it creates the team row, writes each agent’s SOUL.md, IDENTITY.md, TOOLS.md, and AGENTS.md (the collaboration-protocol file that teaches each agent the team roster and <delegate> syntax), assigns each agent to the team, and enables agent-to-agent coordination. A row of ghost avatars lights up one by one as each agent is created.Expected result: the ghosts light up to “All N Boos ready”, and you land in the dashboard directly in your new team’s group chat.

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What you should see

The dashboard opens with your team selected and its group chat in view. The sidebar shows the team and its agents, the Gateway connection indicator is green, and your agents are ready to collaborate.

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What just happened

The wizard walked the full OpenClaw setup path: it detected your environment, installed and configured OpenClaw with your provider key, started the Gateway, and approved this device for pairing. Once the Gateway came up, Clawboo opened two connections to it — a browser-side same-origin proxy connection for the chat and execution stream, and a server-side connection that mirrors the Gateway’s agent list into SQLite (the registry of record), so your fleet persists even when the Gateway is down. Deploying a team created real OpenClaw agents and wired their @mention routing so they can delegate to each other over the Gateway.

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Next steps

First Team

Delegate a task in group chat and watch live board updates.

Dashboard Tour

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

OpenClaw Runtime

Connections, channels, memory scope, and the Gateway in depth.

System API Reference

The status, install, configure, gateway, and device approval endpoints.