The Complete OpenClaw Guide: From Install to a 24/7 AI Employee

Over the past month, a developer named AlexFinn spent tens of thousands of dollars on OpenClaw and used it to generate over $10K in monthly recurring revenue. His experience reveals one thing: 99% of people are using this technology wrong.

OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent framework that works 24/7 on your computer. It's nothing like ChatGPT. OpenClaw has "eyes and hands" — it can control a browser, write code, read files, run commands, and proactively complete tasks while you sleep.

Why OpenClaw Is Worth Your Attention

OpenClaw went viral in late January 2026, becoming one of the fastest-growing projects in GitHub history with over 145,000 stars. Its creator Peter Steinberger describes it as "AI that actually does things."

The core problem with traditional AI tools is passivity. You have to keep typing instructions for them to respond. OpenClaw breaks that in three ways:

1. Self-improvement

OpenClaw remembers all your conversations, preferences, goals, and work habits. Tell it you prefer Codex for coding and it remembers that permanently. Every interaction makes it smarter and more tailored to you.

2. Proactive work mode

A real example from AlexFinn: his OpenClaw saw on Twitter that Elon Musk was offering $1M for the best article, so it automatically built an article-writing feature for his SaaS product. AlexFinn woke up the next morning to finished code. That feature went on to generate $10K+ MRR. The whole thing happened while he slept.

3. Fully customizable

OpenClaw is open source — you can modify any behavior. More importantly, it can customize itself.

Deployment: Local Beats Cloud

There's a lot of bad advice in the community about deployment. Many people recommend VPS hosting. That's a serious mistake.

Four reasons to run it locally:

Simpler setup — local install is one command
Secure by default — data never leaves your device
Better integrations — direct access to your filesystem and apps
Full capability — VPS deployment gives you roughly 20% of what OpenClaw can do

On hardware: you don't need to buy anything new. Any existing device works. If you do need new hardware, a $600 Mac mini is the right call.

Install and Configure: Five Minutes

Step 1: Install

Go to openclaw.ai, scroll to the Quick Start section, copy the command, paste it in your terminal, hit enter. Done.

Step 2: Pick a model

Three main options:

Claude Opus 4.6 — most capable, most "human-feeling," ~$200/month
OpenAI models — middle ground; if you already have a ChatGPT subscription, use it
Minimax — budget option, ~$10/month, excellent value

When configuring your API token: paste it into a text editor first, make sure it's a single line with no line breaks, then paste into OpenClaw.

Step 3: Set up messaging

OpenClaw can talk to you through iMessage, Telegram, Discord, and other everyday apps. AlexFinn strongly recommends Telegram — it supports threading and chunked display, which makes conversations feel natural.

First Priority: Build the Working Relationship

The first thing to do after OpenClaw starts is introduce yourself. This directly determines the quality of everything it does for you.

Three layers of information:

Personal background — who you are, your professional background, your skills
Work preferences — how you want to collaborate (recommended: proactive, autonomous)
Goals — what you want to achieve (the more specific the better — e.g., "make $1M in a year through SaaS")

This gets saved permanently in OpenClaw's memory. Every decision it makes will point toward these goals.

Use Case 1: Daily Briefing System

After establishing the working relationship, the first practical workflow is a daily briefing. AlexFinn's includes: weather, relevant news, video ideas, to-do items, and tasks OpenClaw proactively recommends.

Send this prompt to set it up:

Please schedule a daily briefing at 8am, sent via Telegram.
Include:
1. Weather for my location
2. Top news in AI
3. My to-do items
4. Tasks you could complete today that would move me closer to my goals

Item 4 is the key — it gets OpenClaw actively thinking about how to create value for you.

Use Case 2: Mission Control Dashboard

Send this prompt to build your control center:

I want you to build a Mission Control.
This is a customized place to build whatever tools we need to improve productivity.
Please use Next.js and host it locally.

OpenClaw will vibe-code a base dashboard for you — to-do list, sub-agent tracker, approval queue. You don't write a single line of code.

Advanced Concept: Brain and Muscle Architecture

Your main model (e.g., Claude Opus 4.6) is the "brain" — it handles decisions and coordination. It can call other models as "muscles" for specific work:

Coding tasks → Codex (cheap but powerful)
Latest news → XAI/Grok (connected to social media)
Web search → Brave API (cost-effective)

Setup: tell OpenClaw "use Codex CLI for coding going forward." It'll ask for the API key, you provide it, done.

Three Core Security Rules

OpenClaw can access everything on your computer — if you don't want it touching something, don't be logged into that account on the machine running OpenClaw
Don't expose OpenClaw to the outside world — keep it private, don't let anyone else interact with it
Think through the consequences of every instruction — before giving a command, consider whether it could cause unintended damage

The OpenClaw Mindset

Treat it like an employee, not a tool. Don't tell it how to do things — tell it what outcome you want.

Reverse prompting is your friend. Don't just ask "help me do X." Ask "based on what you know about us, what should we be doing?"

Let it self-improve. When something goes wrong, don't just correct it — let it build the solution.

Based on Alex Finn's video tutorial. Original post: https://x.com/AlexFinn/status/2023439732328525890