OpenClawSetup Guide

Glossary#

📌 TL;DR#

  • Agents (Jarvis, Mr. Stark, Sherlock, Shakespeare) are specialized AIs with distinct roles.
  • Providers (Anthropic, OpenRouter, Brave) supply models and services via API keys.
  • Core infrastructure includes the Gateway, Mission Control, and the scheduler.
  • All data and config lives under ~/.openclaw/.

A#

Agent A specialized AI with a defined role, model, and invocation method within OpenClaw. The four core agents are Jarvis (orchestrator), Mr. Stark (engineer), Sherlock (researcher), and Shakespeare (writer).

Agent-first The core OpenClaw principle: after initial setup, you manage your system primarily by talking to agents (especially Jarvis) in natural language, rather than running shell commands manually.

Anthropic The AI safety and research company that provides the Claude family of models. OpenClaw uses Anthropic's API for Jarvis (Claude Opus) and Mr. Stark (Claude Sonnet via the Claude Code CLI).

API Key A unique credential that authorizes your OpenClaw installation to make calls to an external service like Anthropic or OpenRouter. Stored securely in ~/.openclaw/secrets/*.env files with chmod 600 permissions.

B#

Brave Search The web search provider used by Sherlock to gather real-time information. It offers a free tier covering approximately 2000 queries per month.

C#

Claude Code CLI Anthropic's official command-line interface for using Claude as a coding assistant. It is the runtime environment for Mr. Stark.

Claude Opus Anthropic's most capable (and expensive) model, used by Jarvis for orchestration and complex reasoning.

Claude Sonnet Anthropic's balanced mid-tier model, used by Mr. Stark for code generation and system tasks via the Claude Code CLI.

Cron (OpenClaw) OpenClaw's internal scheduler, located at ~/.openclaw/cron/. It uses JSON job definitions and is managed by talking to Jarvis. This is not the Unix cron system.

D#

DeepSeek V3.2 A powerful, cost-effective model accessed via OpenRouter. It is the engine used by the Shakespeare agent for structured writing and content generation.

G#

Gateway The OpenClaw daemon that handles message routing. It listens for your Telegram messages, delivers them to Jarvis, executes scheduled jobs from the cron directory, and sends responses back to you.

J#

Jarvis Your main orchestrator agent. Running on Claude Opus via Anthropic, Jarvis converses with you on Telegram, manages context, and delegates tasks to the specialist agents (Mr. Stark, Sherlock, Shakespeare).

M#

Memory Files Plain-text files stored in ~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/ that provide Jarvis with persistent, long-term context about your preferences, projects, and past interactions across sessions.

Mission Control The custom Next.js web dashboard built during the guide. It runs on your Pi and you open it at http://localhost:3000 in your laptop's browser (via an SSH tunnel). Provides a real-time view of your agent team's activity, tasks, and scheduled jobs via SSE.

Mr. Stark Your engineer agent. He uses Claude Sonnet via the Claude Code CLI to execute shell commands, write code, debug issues, and manage system tasks when directed by Jarvis.

O#

OpenClaw The open-source framework that orchestrates a personal AI agent team on a Raspberry Pi. It handles agent communication, scheduling, memory, and provides the Gateway and Mission Control interfaces.

OpenRouter An API gateway that provides unified access to many LLM providers. OpenClaw uses it to run Sherlock (Qwen3-235B) and Shakespeare (DeepSeek V3.2).

P#

Prompt Injection A security attack where untrusted input (e.g., from an email or webpage an agent reads) is crafted to trick the agent into performing unauthorized actions. A key security consideration for agents like Sherlock that process external data.

Q#

Qwen3-235B A large, capable reasoning model from Alibaba. It is the model used by the Sherlock research agent, accessed via the OpenRouter API.

R#

Raspberry Pi 5 The recommended single-board computer (costing ~$80-120 for a kit) that serves as the always-on host for your OpenClaw agent team in this guide.

S#

Secrets Vault The directory ~/.openclaw/secrets/ where all API keys are stored in .env files (e.g., anthropic.env, openrouter.env). These files are protected with chmod 600 permissions.

Shakespeare Your writer agent. Specializes in generating well-structured, reference-dense content like documentation and plans. Runs on DeepSeek V3.2 via OpenRouter.

Sherlock Your research agent. Specializes in finding, summarizing, and citing information from the web. Runs on Qwen3-235B via OpenRouter and uses Brave Search as its backend.

SSE (Server-Sent Events) A lightweight streaming protocol used by Mission Control to push live updates (like new tasks or agent messages) from the Pi to your browser without requiring page refreshes.

SSH Tunnel A secure port-forwarding method used to access Mission Control from your laptop. You forward your local port (e.g., 3000) to the Pi's port 3000 over an encrypted SSH connection.

T#

Telegram Bot The bot you create via @BotFather on Telegram. It acts as the messaging interface between you and Jarvis. Its token is stored encrypted in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.

tmux A terminal multiplexer. It is used in this guide to keep the Mission Control Next.js development server running persistently in the background after your SSH session ends. OpenClaw does not use systemd for agent services.

W#

Wrapper Script A small shell script in ~/.openclaw/workspace/scripts/ that invokes a specialist agent with the correct environment, flags, and context. The primary example is stark.sh for Mr. Stark.