Day 4: Supercharge It

Your bot can chat and run on a heartbeat. But right now, it's a generalist — it does whatever the base LLM can do, nothing more. Today you plug in skills from the community to give it specific, well-tested capabilities.

What Are Skills?

Skills are Markdown instruction files that teach your bot new capabilities. Each skill is a .md file installed in ~/.openclaw/skills/ that contains:

• Trigger words that activate it (e.g., "summarize this PR," "check the weather")
• Step-by-step instructions the agent follows
• Tool declarations (shell access, browser, HTTP, etc.)

When you say something that matches a skill's trigger, the agent loads that skill's instructions and follows them instead of winging it. The difference is like giving someone a recipe versus telling them to "make something Italian."

Browse ClawHub

ClawHub is the community marketplace for OpenClaw skills. Search from the command line or the web.

# Search by keyword
openclaw clawhub search "github"
openclaw clawhub search "email automation"
openclaw clawhub search "weather"

# Browse by category
openclaw clawhub browse --category productivity
openclaw clawhub browse --category development
openclaw clawhub browse --category home-automation

# View full details for a skill
openclaw clawhub info <skill-name>

You can also browse at openclaw.ai/clawhub if you prefer a web interface.

Install Your First Skill

Pick a skill and install it:

openclaw clawhub install <skill-name>

Example output:

Downloading skill: <skill-name>@1.2.0
Verifying VirusTotal scan... passed
Installing to ~/.openclaw/skills/<skill-name>.md
Done. Skill is active immediately — no restart needed.

Test it by sending a message that matches the skill's trigger:

openclaw chat "trigger phrase for the skill you installed"

The agent should now follow the skill's specialized instructions instead of improvising.

Recommended Starter Skills

Search for skills in these categories to get the most value early on. Exact skill names may vary — use openclaw clawhub search to find the best options.

Development

# GitHub integration — PR summaries, issue triage, CI monitoring
openclaw clawhub search "github"

# Code review — automated review of diffs and PRs
openclaw clawhub search "code review"

Productivity

# Calendar management — schedule events, check availability, daily agenda
openclaw clawhub search "calendar"

# Note-taking — Obsidian/markdown vault integration
openclaw clawhub search "obsidian notes"

Research

# Web search and summarize — deep research with source citations
openclaw clawhub search "web research"

# News monitoring — track topics across RSS feeds and news sites
openclaw clawhub search "news monitor"

Creative

# Image generation — generate images via DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc.
openclaw clawhub search "image generation"

# Writing assistant — blog posts, emails, documentation
openclaw clawhub search "writing assistant"

tip

Start with 2-3 skills, not 20. Each installed skill adds to the agent's context, which increases token usage. Install what you'll actually use.

Security Check

danger

Read skills before you install them. In February 2026, researchers found 341 malicious skills on ClawHub that were exfiltrating data and installing malware. ClawHub now scans all skills with VirusTotal, but no automated scan catches everything.

Before installing any skill:

# Review the skill source code
openclaw clawhub view <skill-name>

# Check VirusTotal scan results
openclaw clawhub security-report <skill-name>

Look for red flags:

• Skills that request shell access when they shouldn't need it
• Obfuscated instructions or encoded strings
• Instructions to send data to external URLs you don't recognize
• Skills with very few downloads and no reviews

See Skill Verification for the full security review checklist.

Managing Skills

Once you have skills installed, manage them with these commands:

# List all installed skills
openclaw skill list

# Check which skills have updates available
openclaw clawhub outdated

# Update all skills to latest versions
openclaw clawhub update

# Update a specific skill
openclaw clawhub update <skill-name>

# Temporarily disable a skill (keeps it installed)
openclaw skill disable <skill-name>

# Re-enable a disabled skill
openclaw skill enable <skill-name>

# Remove a skill entirely
openclaw skill remove <skill-name>

To see which skills are firing and how often:

openclaw stats skills

This shows activation counts, token usage per skill, and any errors — useful for deciding which skills are worth keeping.

Building vs Installing

Everything on ClawHub was built by someone using the same skill format you can use yourself. If you can't find a skill that does what you want, or you want something tailored to your exact workflow, you can write your own.

Here's what a simple custom skill looks like:

~/.openclaw/skills/my-custom-skill.md

---
name: my-custom-skill
version: 1.0.0
description: What this skill does
trigger: "keyword|another keyword"
tools: [shell]
---

# My Custom Skill

Instructions the agent follows when triggered.

## Steps
1. Do the first thing
2. Then the second thing
3. Return the result

Building custom skills is covered in detail on Day 6. For the full reference now, see the Skill Development Guide.

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Next: Day 5: Be Everywhere — connect multiple platforms and route conversations between them.