Top 25 OpenClaw Claws Worth Installing in 2026 — Ranked by Usefulness and Downloads

OpenClaw's ClawHub registry has 5,400+ skills. After the January 2026 ClawHavoc security audit removed 2,419 suspicious entries, the signal-to-noise ratio improved significantly — but you still have to know what to look for.

These 25 claws are the ones worth installing based on download counts, community star ratings, and real-world utility. The list is organized by category so you can install what matters to your workflow without wading through 3,000 options.

Before installing any community claw, check its VirusTotal report on ClawHub. Pay attention to the tools field — a skill that requests exec for what should be a read-only task deserves extra scrutiny.

Memory and context

1. memory-wiki

Downloads: 132k stars (highest rated on ClawHub)
Install: openclaw skills install memory-wiki --global

The most widely endorsed claw in the community. Teaches the agent patterns for proactively storing facts, preferences, and recurring context in local SQLite. Without a memory skill, your agent starts cold every session. With memory-wiki, it accumulates knowledge about your preferences, project details, and working patterns and applies them automatically.

The key behaviour: when you correct the agent or establish a preference ("I use pnpm, not npm"), memory-wiki encodes that as a remembered fact. Future sessions don't require you to repeat it.

2. capability-evolver

Downloads: 35k+
Install: openclaw skills install capability-evolver --global

The most-downloaded claw by install count. Teaches the agent to recognise when it is repeatedly doing the same task manually and propose drafting a new claw for it. Long-running agent setups drift toward large collections of ad-hoc workarounds; capability-evolver pushes toward systematic skill extraction instead.

Web research

3. web-search

Install: openclaw skills install web-search --global

Enhanced web search patterns beyond the built-in web_search tool. Includes instructions for multi-source research, result deduplication, source credibility scoring, and structured output (summary + sources + confidence). The base web_search tool searches; this claw teaches the agent how to research.

4. deep-research

Install: openclaw skills install deep-research --global

Multi-step research workflow: generates sub-questions, searches each separately, synthesizes into a structured report with citations. Built on the Firecrawl or Exa provider. Use this when you want a thorough answer, not a quick one.

5. web-fetch-reader

Install: openclaw skills install web-fetch-reader --global

Teaches the agent to fetch, clean, and extract structured content from web pages — filtering boilerplate, extracting main body text, parsing tables, and following relevant links. The built-in web_fetch returns raw HTML; this claw makes the output usable.

Coding and development

6. github

Downloads: 189k
Install: openclaw skills install github --global

Read and write GitHub: list open PRs, summarize review comments, post approval or request-changes, fetch issue bodies, create branches. Uses the gh CLI for write actions (so gh auth login is a prerequisite). One of the most downloaded claws because PR review is a near-universal developer workflow.

7. coding-agent

Install: openclaw skills install coding-agent --global

The official OpenClaw coding agent skill from the openclaw/openclaw repo. Teaches systematic code change patterns: read relevant files first, propose the change, confirm, then write. Includes patterns for running tests and checking lint after edits. Works well alongside CLAUDE.md for project-specific context.

8. code-review

Install: openclaw skills install code-review

Structured code review workflow: reads a diff or PR, checks for security issues, suggests improvements, estimates risk level, and formats output as a checklist. Stack this with github to get full PR review automation.

9. terminal-ops

Install: openclaw skills install terminal-ops --global

Safe shell command patterns: always confirms before destructive operations, prefers --dry-run flags, logs commands to a local audit file. If you give your agent exec access, this claw is the safety layer that prevents accidental data loss.

Productivity and notes

10. obsidian

Install: openclaw skills install obsidian --global

Read, search, create, and link notes in your Obsidian vault. The agent can find relevant notes by keyword, create new ones with backlinks, append to daily notes, and extract tasks. Requires OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH set in your config. One of the best claws for knowledge workers who use Obsidian as their second brain.

11. notion

Install: openclaw skills install notion --global

Full Notion workspace integration: read pages and databases, create and update pages, search across the workspace, manage tasks in database views. Requires a Notion integration token. High download count among teams using Notion for project tracking.

12. calendar-intel

Install: openclaw skills install calendar-intel --global

Read your calendar, summarize the day or week ahead, detect scheduling conflicts, and draft agenda notes. Works with Google Calendar (via gog claw dependency) or local .ics files. Useful for morning briefing automation.

13. daily-brief

Install: openclaw skills install daily-brief --global

Composes a structured daily brief: pulls calendar events, checks GitHub notifications, fetches top news on configured topics, and optionally queries your BirdClaw database for Twitter/X digest. The closest thing to a morning assistant that runs locally. Requires several underlying claws (calendar-intel, github, optionally birdclaw).

Communication and messaging

14. slack

Install: openclaw skills install slack --global

Send messages to Slack channels and DMs, read recent messages in a channel, search Slack history, and set your status. Requires a Slack bot token. Useful for agents that need to post updates or summaries to team channels without you copy-pasting.

15. gmail

Install: openclaw skills install gmail --global

Draft and send emails, read inbox threads, search by sender or subject, and mark as read. Uses the Gmail API (OAuth2 setup required). The most popular email claw — Outlook users should look for outlook-mail instead.

16. wacli (WhatsApp CLI)

Downloads: Top 10 on ClawHub
Install: openclaw skills install wacli --global

Send and receive WhatsApp messages, sync conversation history, and search chats through your OpenClaw agent. One of the top-downloaded claws overall, especially useful since WhatsApp is already the channel for a large share of OpenClaw users who are not on Telegram.

Twitter / X

17. birdclaw

Install: openclaw skills install birdclaw

Wraps BirdClaw's local SQLite database as a queryable source for your OpenClaw agent. The agent can search your tweets, bookmarks, DMs, and mentions; generate an AI digest; triage the inbox; or add to your blocklist — all through your configured messaging channel, without opening a browser.

Requires BirdClaw to be installed and initialized separately. This is the claw that connects the two projects: BirdClaw handles the data layer, this claw surfaces it through OpenClaw.

See the setup guide: What Is BirdClaw and How to Use It.

18. x-bookmark-archiver

Install: openclaw skills install x-bookmark-archiver

Syncs Twitter/X bookmarks to a local archive on a schedule, tags them by topic, and makes them searchable via the agent. Lighter than BirdClaw (no web UI) — a good option if you only care about bookmarks and not the full Twitter data layer.

Browser automation

19. browser-control

Install: openclaw skills install browser-control --global

Full Playwright-backed browser control: open pages, click elements, fill forms, take screenshots, extract text. Works headless or headed. Use it for web scraping, UI testing, or automating repetitive web workflows. Requires Playwright (npx playwright install).

20. link-preview

Install: openclaw skills install link-preview --global

Fetches a URL, extracts the main content, and returns a structured preview: title, description, key points, images, and reading time estimate. Lighter than full browser-control for read-only link summarisation.

Files and local tools

21. file-organizer

Install: openclaw skills install file-organizer --global

Teaches patterns for reorganising local directories: categorise files by type and date, propose a new folder structure, move files with confirmation, generate a manifest. Useful for cleaning up Downloads folders or organising project assets.

22. pdf-reader

Install: openclaw skills install pdf-reader --global

Extract text from local PDF files, split by page, answer questions about the content. Uses pdftotext (poppler) or a JS fallback. The closest local equivalent to uploading PDFs to a hosted AI — but your files never leave your machine.

23. backup-guardian

Install: openclaw skills install backup-guardian --global

Monitors configured paths for changes, runs backup commands (rsync, rclone, git), reports status, and alerts on failures. Designed for developers who want a local agent watching their important directories rather than a separate backup daemon.

Agent meta-skills

24. agent-dispatch

Install: openclaw skills install agent-dispatch --global

A lightweight router for multi-agent setups: given a task, routes it to the most appropriate specialised agent or workspace config. Useful when you have separate agent configs for different domains (coding vs research vs communication) and want one entry point.

25. skill-vetter

Downloads: 256k
Install: openclaw skills install skill-vetter --global

The second most downloaded claw. Before installing any new skill, skill-vetter analyses the SKILL.md and supporting files for permission escalation patterns, suspicious tool declarations, prompt injection attempts, and known-bad patterns from the ClawHavoc dataset. Think of it as a local security scanner for claws you are considering.

Given the ClawHavoc incident, this one should probably be installed globally before anything else.

Quick install for a solid starter set

# Security first
openclaw skills install skill-vetter --global

# Memory and context
openclaw skills install memory-wiki --global
openclaw skills install capability-evolver --global

# Web research
openclaw skills install web-search --global
openclaw skills install deep-research --global

# Coding
openclaw skills install github --global
openclaw skills install coding-agent --global

# Productivity
openclaw skills install obsidian --global      # if you use Obsidian
openclaw skills install daily-brief --global

# Twitter (requires BirdClaw installed separately)
openclaw skills install birdclaw

# Browser
openclaw skills install browser-control --global

# Meta
openclaw skills install agent-dispatch --global

Claws to approach carefully

A few popular claws come with caveats worth knowing:

ontology (188k downloads) — builds a semantic knowledge graph from your notes and documents. Powerful but resource-heavy; can be slow on large document sets. Install into a workspace rather than globally.

gog (Google Workspace, 185k downloads) — the official Google Calendar + Drive + Gmail claw. Very capable, but the OAuth2 setup is finicky. Follow the setup guide on ClawHub carefully before installing.

auto-reply — claws in this category automate responses to DMs or emails without confirmation. High-utility in theory; high-risk if the model misunderstands tone or context. Never install these --global; scope them to a specific agent with explicit confirmation patterns.

How to find more claws

# Search by keyword
openclaw skills search "database"
openclaw skills search "calendar"

# Browse the registry
open https://clawhub.ai

# Check community curations
# github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-openclaw-skills
# github.com/LeoYeAI/openclaw-master-skills

The VoltAgent awesome-openclaw-skills repo is the most maintained community curation: 5,400+ skills categorised and filtered, updated regularly. It is the best starting point if ClawHub's browsing UI feels overwhelming.

Writing your own claw

If nothing on ClawHub does exactly what you need, writing a claw is straightforward:

mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/skills/my-workflow

# ~/.openclaw/skills/my-workflow/SKILL.md
---
name: my-workflow
description: Handle my daily standup preparation
tools: [read, web_search, exec]
---

When asked to prepare for standup:
1. Read ~/notes/yesterday.md for what was done
2. Check GitHub for any PR activity in the last 24 hours
3. Draft three bullet points: what I did, what I'm doing, blockers

Format as a short Slack message.

openclaw skills install ./my-workflow --global

The free SKILL.md generator on explainx.ai can scaffold a claw from a description of your workflow.

Related guides

• What Is OpenClaw? Complete Setup Guide — the full OpenClaw explainer
• BirdClaw: Local Twitter X Feed Manager — the companion tool for Twitter/X data
• CLAUDE.md: Stop Getting Generic AI Answers — how to give AI agents project-specific context

The skill registry is at clawhub.ai. The OpenClaw docs are at docs.openclaw.ai. The GitHub org is at github.com/openclaw.