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OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant that runs on your own devices. It bridges messaging services (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, iMessage, and more) to AI coding agents through a centralized gateway.

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Quick start

ollama launch openclaw
Ollama handles everything automatically:
  1. Install — If OpenClaw isn’t installed, Ollama prompts to install it via npm
  2. Security — On the first launch, a security notice explains the risks of tool access
  3. Model — Pick a model from the selector (local or cloud)
  4. Onboarding — Ollama configures the provider, installs the gateway daemon, sets your model as the primary, and enables OpenClaw’s bundled Ollama web search
  5. Gateway — Starts in the background and opens the OpenClaw TUI
OpenClaw requires a larger context window. It is recommended to use a context window of at least 64k tokens if using local models. See Context length for more information.
Previously known as Clawdbot. ollama launch clawdbot still works as an alias.

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Web search and fetch

OpenClaw ships with a bundled Ollama web_search provider that lets local or cloud-backed Ollama setups search the web through the configured Ollama host. 
ollama launch openclaw
Ollama web search is enabled automatically when launching OpenClaw through Ollama. To configure it manually: 
openclaw configure --section web
Ollama web search for local models requires ollama signin.

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Configure without launching

To change the model without starting the gateway and TUI: 
ollama launch openclaw --config
To use a specific model directly: 
ollama launch openclaw --model kimi-k2.5:cloud
If the gateway is already running, it restarts automatically to pick up the new model. Cloud models:
  • kimi-k2.5:cloud — Multimodal reasoning with subagents
  • qwen3.5:cloud — Reasoning, coding, and agentic tool use with vision
  • glm-5.1:cloud — Reasoning and code generation
  • minimax-m2.7:cloud — Fast, efficient coding and real-world productivity
Local models:
  • gemma4 — Reasoning and code generation locally (~16 GB VRAM)
  • qwen3.5 — Reasoning, coding, and visual understanding locally (~11 GB VRAM)
More models at ollama.com/search.

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Non-interactive (headless) mode

Run OpenClaw without interaction for use in Docker, CI/CD, or scripts: 
ollama launch openclaw --model kimi-k2.5:cloud --yes
The --yes flag auto-pulls the model, skips selectors, and requires --model to be specified.

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Connect messaging apps

openclaw configure --section channels
Link WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, or iMessage to chat with your local models from anywhere.

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Stopping the gateway

openclaw gateway stop