Openclaw-Quickstart on Chen Kai Blog

OpenClaw QuickStart (10): Production Deploy and the Failure Modes Nobody Warns You About

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The local install gets you to ‘it works on my machine.’ The server install ensures it survives a kernel update.

This chapter walks through the deployment I use on a 2-core 4GB ECS box and the common failures I’ve documented.

Choosing your server#

OpenClaw QuickStart (9): The China IM Picker, with Honest Tradeoffs

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Chapter 5 covered Telegram, DingTalk, and WeChat at a glance. This chapter is the sequel for everyone in mainland China who needed to ship something past their team’s IT department. There are too many channels, the docs are scattered across a dozen READMEs, and most of the “compare” tables online are out of date.

Here’s the matrix I check before making any recommendations.

OpenClaw QuickStart (8): Heartbeat, Cron, and Getting Pinged at 7am

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The first time I deployed OpenClaw I sat there sending it messages. After two days I realized I had built a chatbot, not an agent. The thing that made it an agent was the moment it started messaging me without being asked.

This piece is about the two ways to make that happen.

Heartbeat vs Cron — pick one in your head#

OpenClaw QuickStart (7): The Memory System, Without the Magic

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The first six pieces got you to a working OpenClaw with a channel and a skill. This one focuses on the part everyone gets wrong on their first install: memory.

The shape of the workspace#

Open ~/.openclaw/workspace/. You should see:

OpenClaw QuickStart (6): Skills, MCP, and Shipping Something Real

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

After five pieces, you have a working OpenClaw with a chat channel. This is where it stops being a demo.

What we’ll build#

A morning-briefing agent that:

Runs at 7am every weekday
Fetches the top headlines from Hacker News (via a Playwright MCP server)
Reads my calendar for the day (via a Skill that wraps gcalcli)
Summarizes both into a paragraph and pushes it to my Telegram

This is a real workflow. By the end, you’ll have the structure to swap in your own data sources. But first, let’s understand the two systems we’re combining.

OpenClaw QuickStart (5): Wiring Telegram, DingTalk, and the WeChat Reality

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The point of OpenClaw is that the agent comes to you. So far ours hasn’t — it’s only on the TUI. Time to wire a channel.

Telegram — five minutes#

I always tell people to start here even if they don’t plan to use Telegram in production. The setup is the cleanest of any channel and you can verify the agent end-to-end without other moving parts.

OpenClaw QuickStart (4): Configuration, Model Providers, and the Coding Plan Trick

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

If you only edit one file in OpenClaw, this is it.

~/.openclaw/openclaw.json controls models, tools, channels, memory, cron, and skill loading. The onboarding wizard wrote a default; this piece walks the parts you will actually touch.

The minimal viable config#

Strip away the comments and the default sets, and a working config is about 25 lines:

OpenClaw QuickStart (3): The Six Layers That Make the Agent Loop Work

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

You can use OpenClaw for months without reading this. But the first time you need to write a skill, debug a misrouted message, or figure out why the agent forgot something, you’ll want to know what each component does.

The six layers#

OpenClaw QuickStart (2): Install and First Chat in 10 Minutes

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The README claims five minutes, but I’d say ten. The extra time accounts for the common Node version mistake.

Prerequisites#

Node v22.16 or newer. The project is strict about this. Older Node versions will install, but the gateway will throw errors with optional chaining in some places. I run v24 because that’s the recommended track.
About 2 GB free RAM at runtime, more if you load big skills.
An LLM API key from one of: DashScope (free tier works), Anthropic, OpenAI, or the Aliyun Bailian Coding Plan (200元/month for eight models).

Check Node first:

OpenClaw QuickStart (1): What This Thing Actually Is

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

I keep getting asked, “Is OpenClaw just another wrapper around an LLM?” The short answer is no, and the reason is important enough that I wanted to write it down before walking through the QuickStart.

This is the first part of a ten-part series. By the end, you should have a working OpenClaw on your machine, communicating with a model, listening on at least one chat channel, and performing tasks that survive a reboot.