I’ve been running OpenClaw for months now. Not as a weekend experiment — as a daily driver for freelance dev work. And here’s the thing nobody tells you: the raw install isn’t the interesting part. The skills are.
OpenClaw ships with a solid baseline agent. But the moment you start bolting on AgentSkills — specialized add-ons that teach it new tricks — it becomes something genuinely different. The problem is the marketplace has grown fast. There are dozens of skills on ClawHub, and not all of them are worth your time.
So let me save you the trial-and-error. These are the skills that stayed installed on my machine. The ones that changed how I work, not just the ones that looked impressive in a demo.
30-Second Primer: How Skills Work
If you’re new to this, here’s the quick version.
OpenClaw uses AgentSkills — small folders with a SKILL.md file that teach your agent how to use a specific tool or service. The agent reads those instructions and gains that capability. No code changes, no restarts.
ClawHub (clawhub.ai) is the public registry where these skills live. Think npm, but for agent capabilities. Install the CLI first:
npm i -g clawhubThen install any skill in one line:
clawhub install <skill-name>Skills land in your workspace’s skills/ folder. Start a new OpenClaw session and they’re live. That’s it.
You can also search the registry from the terminal:
clawhub search "github issues"And keep everything up to date:
clawhub update --allNow let’s talk about what’s actually worth installing.
The Tier List: 9 Skills, Ranked by Real-World Value
🏆 S-Tier: Daily Drivers
#### 1. github — GitHub Operations via gh CLI
Install: Ships bundled with OpenClaw (requires gh CLI on PATH)
This is the one I use every single day. The github skill wraps the gh CLI and makes GitHub a first-class citizen in your agent conversations. You can ask it to:
- List open PRs across repos
- Check CI status on a pull request
- Create issues with structured bodies
- View failed workflow logs without opening a browser
The gh pr checks and gh run view --log-failed commands alone are worth it — watching your CI live from a chat interface feels like a cheat code when you’re debugging a pipeline failure at 11pm.
Best for: Any dev working with GitHub repos. Essential if you do code review or CI monitoring.
#### 2. gh-issues — Auto-Fix GitHub Issues with Sub-agents
Install: Ships bundled with OpenClaw
This one is legitimately wild. Point it at a repo, and it’ll fetch open issues, analyze them for actionability, spawn parallel sub-agents to implement fixes, and open PRs — all without you touching a line of code.
# In OpenClaw, just say:
/gh-issues owner/repo --label bug --limit 5It has a confidence check built in. If the issue is too vague (score < 7/10), it skips rather than generating garbage. It also handles PR review comments — spawn a review-fix agent that reads the feedback and pushes updates automatically.
Is it perfect? No. Complex issues need human judgment. But for the class of “obvious bug, clear repro, known fix” issues? It’s genuinely time-saving.
Best for: Open source maintainers, freelancers clearing a backlog, or anyone who wants to stop context-switching for small bugs.
#### 3. tmux — Remote-Control Terminal Sessions
Install: Ships bundled with OpenClaw (requires tmux)
This one is subtle but transformative. The tmux skill lets your agent send keystrokes to and read output from running tmux sessions. Which means:
- Monitor a long-running build without watching the terminal yourself
- Approve prompts in interactive CLIs (like Claude Code) hands-free
- Check the status of parallel workers across multiple panes
# What the agent can do under the hood:
tmux capture-pane -t worker-2 -p | tail -20
tmux send-keys -t worker-3 "y" EnterIf you’re running any kind of multi-session workflow — parallel test runners, coding agents, long-running deploys — this skill turns OpenClaw into a session manager. Hugely underrated.
Best for: Developers with complex terminal setups, anyone running OpenClaw on a VPS or Pi (#).
✅ A-Tier: Solid, Stays Installed
#### 4. slack — Slack Messaging + Summarization
Install: Ships bundled (requires Slack bot token configured in OpenClaw)
I don’t use Slack much, but when I do it’s usually to catch up on a channel I’ve ignored for a day. The slack skill lets you read recent messages, post replies, react, and pin items — all from your agent.
The killer use case for me: “summarize the last 50 messages in #dev-ops and tell me if anything needs my attention.” It’s essentially a Slack summary bot that you actually control.
You can also automate reactions and pinning for task workflows — mark a message ✅ when a deploy finishes, that kind of thing.
Best for: Developers drowning in async communication. Pairs well with the summarize skill.
#### 5. gemini — Gemini CLI for Research and Generation
Install: clawhub install gemini (requires gemini CLI via brew install gemini-cli)
Having a second model available as a tool is more useful than it sounds. I use the gemini skill when I want a second opinion on a technical decision, need to draft something in a different style, or want to cross-reference documentation quickly.
gemini "Explain the tradeoffs between Postgres JSONB and a normalized schema for audit logs"It’s one-shot — no interactive back-and-forth — which makes it fast and predictable. Good for research tasks and generation where you don’t need a conversation.
Best for: Researchers, technical writers, developers who want multi-model access.
#### 6. obsidian — Vault Access for Second Brain Users
Install: Ships bundled (requires obsidian-cli via Homebrew)
If you use Obsidian as a second brain (and you should), this skill closes the loop between your notes and your agent. You can create notes, search vault content, and move/rename with backlink preservation.
The obsidian-cli move command is the real differentiator — it updates [[wikilinks]] across your whole vault automatically. That’s not something you want to do manually.
Best for: Obsidian users who want their agent to read and write notes as part of workflows. Pairs well with notion if you use both.
📦 B-Tier: Useful, but Situational
#### 7. notion — Notion API Integration
Install: Ships bundled (requires NOTION_API_KEY)
The notion skill gives you full Notion API access — create pages, query databases, update blocks. If your project management lives in Notion (affiliate link), being able to create tasks and update status from a chat interface saves real clicks.
Setup is a bit more involved than most skills (you need to create an integration and share pages with it), but once it’s configured it works reliably.
Best for: Teams or freelancers who live in Notion for project management.
#### 8. trello — Trello Card Management
Install: Ships bundled (requires TRELLO_API_KEY and TRELLO_TOKEN)
Trello’s REST API is simple, and the skill reflects that. List boards, create cards, move cards between lists — basic but reliable. I use it less since moving to Notion, but if Trello is your tool it does what it says.
Best for: Trello-native workflows. If you’re already on Notion, skip this one.
#### 9. sag — ElevenLabs TTS with Voice Selection
Install: Ships bundled (requires sag CLI + ELEVENLABS_API_KEY, install via brew install steipete/tap/sag)
Text-to-speech that actually sounds good. The sag skill wraps the sag CLI for ElevenLabs TTS — you can pick voices, read back code summaries, generate audio for presentations, or just have your agent narrate something while you’re cooking.
sag speak -v "Roger" "Deploy completed successfully. 3 files changed."It’s not a daily driver for me, but when I need it — demos, documentation narration, hands-free status updates — it’s the best option available.
Best for: Developers building demos, content creators, accessibility-first workflows.
Deep Dive: My Top 3 for Freelance Dev Work
If I had to pick three and nothing else, here’s what survives the cut and why.
#1: github + gh-issues (treat as a pair)
These two are what made me a believer. The github skill handles day-to-day GitHub ops — checking PRs, viewing CI logs, creating issues. The gh-issues skill takes it further by actually *fixing* things.
As a freelancer, I have a problem with context-switching. Every time I jump from a client project to triage a bug report is a small tax on focus. Having the agent handle the “obvious fix” class of issues — read the issue, find the code, write the fix, open the PR — removes a whole category of interruption.
It doesn’t replace real engineering work. But it handles the boring parts so I don’t have to.
#2: tmux
I run OpenClaw on a VPS (#) and a Raspberry Pi (#) 24/7. The tmux skill is how the agent manages long-running processes on those machines without me logging in and babysitting.
Build running? Check the pane. Claude Code session waiting for input? Approve it without SSH-ing in. Test suite grinding? Capture the last 20 lines and report back.
For anyone running OpenClaw as a persistent background agent rather than a desktop app, tmux is non-negotiable.
#3: slack (for async comms)
I’m not a Slack power user, but most clients are. The summarize-and-triage use case is genuinely useful: catch up on a 100-message thread in 10 seconds, identify the one thing that needs your response, and move on.
The reaction/pin workflow for task tracking is a bonus. Mark a message ✅ when you’ve handled something, without opening Slack. Small thing, but friction reduction compounds.
Skills I Tried and Dropped (Honest)
spotify — Cool party trick. Not actually useful for work. Uninstalled after a week.
openhue — Philips Hue light control. Genuinely delightful. Also completely unnecessary unless you have a very specific smart home setup. Dropped because it loaded every session for no reason.
openai-whisper — Local speech-to-text. Great concept. I just don’t dictate enough to keep a model loaded locally. Your mileage may vary here.
wacli — WhatsApp CLI integration. Useful if your clients use WhatsApp heavily. I don’t, so it went.
The lesson: skills have a small but real token cost in your system prompt. Don’t install skills you’re not actively using. clawhub list shows what’s installed; trim ruthlessly.
Finding New Skills: ClawHub
New skills ship regularly. The best way to keep up is clawhub.ai — browse by category or use the search:
clawhub search "calendar"
clawhub search "postgres"
clawhub search "deploy"The registry uses vector search, so natural language queries work better than exact skill names. Search for what you want to *do*, not what you expect the skill to be *called*.
Once you find something worth trying, install and test it in an isolated session before adding it to your daily driver config. Some skills have environment requirements (API keys, local binaries) that take a few minutes to set up.
Building Your Own Skills
If you can’t find what you need on ClawHub, building a skill is genuinely straightforward. A skill is just a folder with a SKILL.md — a YAML-frontmatter header plus plain English instructions telling the agent how to use a tool.
The skill-creator bundled skill can scaffold one for you. Once it’s working, publish it back to ClawHub:
clawhub publish ./my-skill --slug my-skill --name "My Skill" --version 1.0.0 --changelog "Initial release"The community benefits, you get feedback, and it’s versioned so you can update it later. Worth it if you’re building something others might use.
What’s Next: Run OpenClaw 24/7
Skills are most powerful when OpenClaw is always running — on a VPS or a Raspberry Pi sitting on your desk. If you’re still running it on your laptop and closing the lid, you’re leaving most of the value on the table.
Check out our setup guide:
- VPS (Hostinger, ~$3–5/month): [Full VPS Setup Guide →] #
- Raspberry Pi 4/5 (self-hosted): [Raspberry Pi OpenClaw Setup →] #
A persistent agent with the right skills installed is a different beast than a chat window you open occasionally. That’s the setup worth working toward.
Quick Reference: Install Commands
| Skill | Install Command | Requires |
|---|---|---|
github | Bundled (no install) | gh CLI on PATH |
gh-issues | Bundled (no install) | curl, git, gh |
tmux | Bundled (no install) | tmux on PATH |
slack | Bundled (no install) | Slack bot token in config |
gemini | clawhub install gemini | brew install gemini-cli |
obsidian | Bundled (no install) | obsidian-cli via brew |
notion | Bundled (no install) | NOTION_API_KEY in config |
trello | Bundled (no install) | Trello API key + token |
sag | Bundled (no install) | brew install steipete/tap/sag + ElevenLabs key |
> Tip: After installing any new skill, start a new OpenClaw session — skills are loaded at session start and won’t appear in an existing session.
*Mike Reynolds is a freelance developer and contributor to EasyOutcomes.ai. He writes about AI tooling, developer productivity, and making computers do more of the boring stuff so humans don’t have to.*
📢 FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase a VPS through the Hostinger link or a Raspberry Pi through the affiliate link above, EasyOutcomes.ai may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These links help keep the site running. All opinions are my own — I only recommend tools I’ve actually used.