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🦞 Welcome to the CLAW EXTERMINATOR Wiki

EXTERMINATE. Tasks. Faster.
The complete knowledge base for mastering OpenClaw — setup, configuration, skills, security, and beyond.

📚 Wiki Navigation

Page What's Inside
Home You are here — overview and orientation
Installation Guide Every platform: npm, Docker, VPS, Raspberry Pi, Mac Mini
SOUL.md Masterclass Templates, philosophy, best practices
HEARTBEAT.md Guide Proactive agents, scheduling, trigger patterns
Skills — Curated List The best ClawHub skills, filtered and ranked
Security Handbook How to not get owned. Required reading.
Configuration Cookbook Multi-model, multi-channel, multi-agent configs
Extermination Leaderboard Community wins — documented and ranked
Advanced Patterns Orchestration, knowledge bases, automation pipelines
Contributing How to submit exterminations, templates, and fixes
FAQ The questions everyone asks first
Glossary SOUL.md, HEARTBEAT, Gateway, ClawHub — all defined

Not affiliated with Peter Steinberger or the official OpenClaw team.
Wiki maintained by @Devanik21 and community contributors.

# 🦞 Welcome to the CLAW EXTERMINATOR Wiki

EXTERMINATE. Tasks. Faster.
The complete knowledge base for mastering OpenClaw — setup, configuration, skills, security, and beyond.

📚 Wiki Navigation

Page What's Inside
Home You are here — overview and orientation
Installation Guide Every platform: npm, Docker, VPS, Raspberry Pi, Mac Mini
SOUL.md Masterclass Templates, philosophy, best practices
HEARTBEAT.md Guide Proactive agents, scheduling, trigger patterns
Skills — Curated List The best ClawHub skills, filtered and ranked
Security Handbook How to not get owned. Required reading.
Configuration Cookbook Multi-model, multi-channel, multi-agent configs
Extermination Leaderboard Community wins — documented and ranked
Advanced Patterns Orchestration, knowledge bases, automation pipelines
Contributing How to submit exterminations, templates, and fixes
FAQ The questions everyone asks first
Glossary SOUL.md, HEARTBEAT, Gateway, ClawHub — all defined

🔥 What Is CLAW EXTERMINATOR?

OpenClaw hit 190K+ GitHub stars faster than any open-source project in history. The official repo gives you the runtime. This repo gives you the mastery.

OpenClaw is a personal AI agent framework — a Gateway that connects LLMs (Claude, GPT-4o, Gemini, local Ollama models) to your messaging apps, files, calendar, email, browser, and code. It runs 24/7, executes tasks autonomously, and learns your preferences over time.

The gap this wiki fills: The official docs cover the runtime. They don't cover what to put in your SOUL.md, which skills from ClawHub's 13,700+ submissions are actually worth installing, how to secure your setup, or what god-tier agents look like in practice. That's what you'll find here.

🚀 New Here? Start in This Order

Step 1 — Install OpenClaw

npm install -g openclaw
openclaw onboard

The onboard wizard handles Gateway setup, channel connection, model selection, and your first skill install. Takes about 5 minutes. Full details → Installation Guide

Step 2 — Write Your SOUL.md

SOUL.md is your agent's constitution. It's read at the start of every reasoning cycle and governs everything — personality, permissions, memory habits, communication style.

~/.openclaw/workspace/SOUL.md

Start with a template from SOUL.md Masterclass. The Daily Driver template works for 80% of people out of the box.

Step 3 — Set Up HEARTBEAT.md

This is what makes your agent proactive instead of reactive. The Gateway wakes on a configurable interval (default: 30 min) and executes whatever you've defined.

~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md

Full guide → HEARTBEAT.md Guide

Step 4 — Install Curated Skills

Don't browse ClawHub blind. Start with the vetted list in Skills — Curated List. Read Security Handbook first — ClawHub has had malicious skill submissions.

Step 5 — Share Your First Extermination

Once your agent does something impressive, document it and open a PR. → Contributing

⚙️ How OpenClaw Works (Architecture in 60 Seconds)

Your Messaging App (Telegram / Slack / WhatsApp / Signal...)
         │
         ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    GATEWAY                          │
│         ws://127.0.0.1:18789 (control plane)        │
│  routes channels · manages sessions · handles auth  │
└────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┘
                     │
         ┌───────────▼───────────┐
         │     AGENT RUNTIME     │
         │   ReAct loop:         │
         │   think → act →       │
         │   observe → repeat    │
         └───────────┬───────────┘
                     │
      ┌──────────────┼──────────────┐
      ▼              ▼              ▼
  MEMORY          SKILLS         HEARTBEAT
  SOUL.md         ClawHub        Proactive
  USER.md         MCP plugins    scheduled
  MEMORY.md       Built-ins      triggers

Five components to understand:

Gateway — The long-running WebSocket daemon. Single control plane for all your channels, sessions, and routing. Runs as a background service.

Agent Runtime — The ReAct loop. The LLM thinks, calls a tool, observes the result, thinks again, repeats until the task is complete, then replies.

Memory — Plain Markdown files on your disk. Not a database. Not a vector store (unless you add one). SOUL.md is identity. HEARTBEAT.md is schedule. MEMORY.md is recall. USER.md is what the agent learns about you. AGENTS.md is for multi-agent coordination.

Skills — Modular SKILL.md extensions. Installed from ClawHub or written locally. Each skill gives the agent a new capability: web search, email, calendar, GitHub, voice, etc.

Heartbeat — A scheduler that wakes the agent at a configurable interval. This is the difference between a reactive chatbot and an agent that does things without being asked.

🧠 The Memory File System

File Purpose Edit frequency
SOUL.md Identity, personality, core rules Rarely — only when fundamentals change
HEARTBEAT.md Scheduled proactive tasks and triggers Occasionally — add/remove checks
USER.md What the agent has learned about you Agent updates this automatically
IDENTITY.md How the agent presents itself on each channel Set once
MEMORY.md Running log of completed tasks and learned facts Agent updates after each task
AGENTS.md Coordination rules for multi-agent setups Only for advanced orchestration

Golden rule: Keep SOUL.md under 500 lines. If it bloats, split workflow rules into HEARTBEAT.md and project-specific AGENTS.md files.

📡 Supported Channels

Channel Status Notes
Telegram ✅ Stable Best experience. Full feature support.
Slack ✅ Stable Ideal for work/team setups
WhatsApp ✅ Stable Session-based auth — set once
Signal ✅ Stable Most private option
iMessage ✅ macOS only Requires Mac with Messages app
Discord ✅ Stable Good for community/server bots
Email (IMAP) ✅ Stable Read + reply to email directly
Voice (ElevenLabs) 🔧 Via skill Requires elevenlabs-voice skill

🤖 Model Recommendations

Use case Recommended model Why
Complex reasoning, coding, planning Claude Opus / GPT-4o Best capability ceiling
Summarisation, drafting, Q&A Claude Sonnet / Gemini Flash Great balance of speed + quality
Heartbeat checks (high-frequency) Claude Haiku / Gemini Flash Low cost, fast, sufficient
Fully local / private Llama 3.3 70B via Ollama No API cost, no data leaving your machine
Code generation Claude Sonnet / GPT-4o Consistently strong on code tasks

Multi-model tip: Run Haiku or Flash for your Heartbeat (runs every 30 min, adds up fast) and Opus/GPT-4o for your main sessions. The cost difference is dramatic.

☠️ Extermination Leaderboard

An extermination = a documented agent win. Time is wall-clock from task start to completion.

# Exterminator The Extermination ⏱ Time Model
🥇 1 @steipete Negotiated $4,200 off a car purchase over email — while asleep ~8 hrs Claude Opus
🥈 2 @AlbertMoral Full website built from phone, on a Raspberry Pi, via WhatsApp ~4 min Claude Sonnet
🥉 3 @Infoxicador Agent self-provisioned a Google OAuth token autonomously ~6 min Opus
4 @bangkokbuild Told agent via Telegram to shut down the PC (and itself) ~30s Sonnet
5 @pranavkarthik__ Agent built and deployed its own university assignment skill ~12 min Sonnet
6 @vallver Built Stumblereads.com from phone while putting baby to sleep ~20 min Opus

Full leaderboard with proof links → Extermination Leaderboard
Submit yours → Contributing

🔒 Security — Read This Before Installing Any Skill

Skills are code from strangers. OpenClaw runs them with real access to your machine.

Minimum baseline before anything else:

openclaw doctor   # scans for misconfigs and security issues

Before installing any skill from ClawHub:

  • Read the source code on the skill's ClawHub page before running /skills install
  • Check the VirusTotal scan result on the skill page
  • Prefer skills from contributors with existing published history
  • Be skeptical of high install counts with few reviews

In January 2026, 341 malicious skills were discovered on ClawHub across coordinated campaigns. Moderation has improved — but user vigilance is irreplaceable.

Full guide with sandbox configuration → Security Handbook

📋 Most Used Commands

# Gateway management
openclaw onboard          # First-time setup wizard
openclaw doctor           # Scan for misconfigs and security issues
openclaw status           # Active channels, model, token usage
openclaw restart          # Restart the Gateway

# Skills
/skills browse <category> # Browse ClawHub by category
/skills install <slug>    # Install a skill
/skills list              # List installed skills
/skills update --all      # Update all skills

# Session
/status                   # Compact session info
/reset                    # Reset conversation context
/model <name>             # Switch model mid-session

🤝 Contributing

This wiki and the main repo are community-driven. Three ways to contribute:

1. Submit an extermination — open a PR on the main repo with title [EXTERMINATION] what happened
2. Improve a wiki page — click Edit on any page, make your change, submit
3. Add a SOUL.md template — PR with title [SOUL] template name

Every contributor is permanently listed in CONTRIBUTORS.md.
Every merged extermination gets a shoutout on X with #ClawExterminator.

Full guide → Contributing

🌐 Links
Main repo [github.com/Devanik21/claw-exterminator](https://github.com/Devanik21/claw-exterminator)
Official OpenClaw [github.com/openclaw/openclaw](https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw)
Official docs [docs.openclaw.ai](https://docs.openclaw.ai)
ClawHub (skills) [clawhub.com](https://clawhub.com)
SOUL.md registry [onlycrabs.ai](https://onlycrabs.ai)
Official Discord [discord.gg/openclaw](https://discord.gg/openclaw)
Reddit [r/clawdbot](https://reddit.com/r/clawdbot)
Creator on X [@devanik2005](https://x.com/devanik2005)
Creator on LinkedIn [linkedin.com/in/devanik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/devanik/)

Not affiliated with Peter Steinberger or the official OpenClaw team.
Wiki maintained by [@Devanik21](https://github.com/Devanik21) and community contributors.

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