Getting Started

OpenClaw runs as a single Gateway process on your machine (or a remote server). The Gateway is the control plane for channels, sessions, tools, and events.

The preferred setup is the onboarding wizard (openclaw onboard) in your terminal, which guides you step by step through the gateway, workspace, channels, and skills. The CLI wizard works on macOS, Linux, and Windows (via WSL2; strongly recommended) and supports npm, pnpm, or bun.

What you need

• Node 22 or later.
• An API key or OAuth account for a model provider. Anthropic (Claude Pro/Max) and OpenAI (ChatGPT/Codex) are supported via OAuth.
• Optional: chat-app accounts you want to bridge (WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, etc.).

Model note: while any model is supported, the recommended baseline is Anthropic Pro/Max + Opus 4.6 for long-context strength and better prompt-injection resistance.

Choose your path

• Install — install the CLI globally and run the onboarding wizard.
• Quick start — minimal commands to get a Gateway running.
• Onboarding wizard — what the wizard does and how to drive it.
• From source — clone and build for development.
• Updating — upgrading between releases and switching channels.

Multi-tenant first?

If you're spinning up OpenClawMU specifically for tenant isolation, jump to Multi-Tenancy. The base install steps are the same — multi-tenancy is enabled automatically when tenant tokens are used.