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10 Things You Can Do With OpenClaw (Practical Use Cases and Examples)

Published February 20, 2026 | By Matt

OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot / Moltbot) is an open-source AI assistant that runs on your own hardware and connects to your messaging apps. But once you’ve got it installed on your Mac or set up on Windows, the natural question is: what should I actually do with it?

Unlike traditional AI chatbots that just answer questions, OpenClaw is designed to take action. It can interact with your file system, run commands, browse the web, and connect to external services. Below are ten practical use cases that demonstrate what makes OpenClaw genuinely useful — along with example prompts you can send right through your messaging app.

Not sure what OpenClaw is? Read our complete guide to what OpenClaw is and how it works first.

1. Email Inbox Management

One of the most popular use cases is handing your inbox over to OpenClaw for triage. It can scan your emails, sort them by priority, summarize what needs your attention, and even draft responses for you to review.

Example prompts you might send via WhatsApp or Telegram:

"Clear my inbox of newsletters and promotional emails"

"Summarize the 5 most important emails I received today"

"Draft a reply to the email from Sarah about the project deadline"

OpenClaw connects to your email through configured integrations (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) and handles the sorting and drafting work. You review and approve before anything is sent.

2. Calendar Scheduling and Management

Instead of switching between apps to manage your calendar, you can manage it entirely through conversation. OpenClaw can check your availability, schedule meetings, resolve conflicts, and send confirmations — all from chat.

Example prompts:

"Schedule a meeting with the team next Tuesday at 3 PM"

"What does my calendar look like this week?"

"Move my Thursday afternoon meeting to Friday morning"

This is particularly powerful when combined with cron jobs (covered below), so OpenClaw can proactively send you a daily calendar summary each morning.

3. File and Folder Organization

OpenClaw has direct access to your file system (within your configured workspace), which means it can organize, rename, move, and summarize files on your behalf.

Example prompts:

"Organize my Downloads folder by file type"

"Summarize the PDF called report.pdf on my desktop"

"Find all files larger than 100MB in my home directory"

For developers, this extends to project-level tasks like cleaning up build artifacts, organizing assets, or sorting log files.

4. Browser Automation

OpenClaw can control a browser to perform tasks that would normally require you to manually navigate websites, fill out forms, and click through interfaces.

Example prompts:

"Book the cheapest flight to Berlin next month"

"Search for a 3-star hotel in Tokyo for the first week of April"

"Fill out the expense report form on our company portal"

The browser automation capabilities mean OpenClaw can handle tasks like searching, comparing, and filling forms — then report back with what it found or did. This is one of the features that led people to call OpenClaw “AI with hands.”

5. Shell Command Execution

For developers and system administrators, the ability to run shell commands through a messaging app is incredibly useful. You can manage your server, run scripts, check system health, and execute Git operations from your phone.

Example prompts:

"Run git pull on my project repo"

"Check how much disk space is left on this machine"

"Restart the Docker containers for my web app"

By default, OpenClaw prompts for consent before executing potentially dangerous commands. You can configure the exec.ask setting in your config to control which commands require approval and which can run automatically.

6. Scheduled Tasks and Proactive Reminders (Cron Jobs)

Unlike most AI assistants that only respond when spoken to, OpenClaw can run tasks on a schedule. This is one of its most distinctive features — it can proactively reach out to you through your messaging app with information or completed tasks.

Example prompts:

"Every morning at 8 AM, send me a summary of my calendar and top emails"

"Check my website for downtime every hour and alert me if it's down"

"Remind me every Friday at 5 PM to submit my timesheet"

Cron jobs turn OpenClaw from a reactive tool into a proactive assistant that works for you even when you’re not thinking about it.

7. Smart Home Control

If you have a smart home setup (HomeKit, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings, or IFTTT), OpenClaw can serve as a natural language interface for controlling your devices.

Example prompts:

"Turn on the living room lights and set the temperature to 72°F"

"Set a routine to turn off all lights at 11 PM"

"Is the front door locked?"

The advantage over built-in voice assistants is that OpenClaw remembers your preferences, can chain multiple actions together, and operates through whatever messaging platform you prefer.

8. Research and Content Summarization

OpenClaw can search the web, read documents, and compile research summaries — then deliver the results directly to your chat.

Example prompts:

"Research the latest developments in AI agents and summarize the key trends"

"Read this PDF and give me the three most important takeaways"

"Compare the pricing of the top 5 project management tools"

With web search skills enabled, OpenClaw can pull in current information beyond its model’s training data, making it useful for market research, competitive analysis, and staying up to date on rapidly changing topics.

9. Custom Skills and ClawHub Extensions

OpenClaw’s skill system lets you extend its capabilities far beyond the defaults. ClawHub is the community skill registry where you can discover, install, and share skills with a single command.

To install a skill:

openclaw skill install <skill-name>

Community skills cover a wide range of functionality: monitoring cryptocurrency prices, tracking packages, posting to social media, integrating with project management tools, and much more. You can also build your own custom skills — just ask OpenClaw itself to help you create one.

Example prompt:

"Create a skill to monitor Hacker News for posts about AI agents and alert me when something hits the front page"

A word of caution: always vet community skills before installing them. Some have been found to contain malicious code. See our OpenClaw security guide for best practices on skill safety.

10. Coding Workflows and Developer Automation

For developers, OpenClaw pairs powerfully with coding tools. Some users run it alongside Claude Code or GitHub Copilot, using OpenClaw as the orchestration layer that delegates specific coding tasks to the right tool.

Example prompts:

"Run the test suite for my project and summarize any failures"

"Set up a Sentry webhook and automatically create PRs for critical errors"

"Review the latest PR on my repo and summarize the changes"

The multi-agent pattern is particularly interesting: you can configure separate OpenClaw agents for work and personal tasks, each with their own personality, permissions, and connected services. Some power users set up OpenClaw to autonomously run tests, capture errors, resolve them, and open pull requests — all while they sleep.

Getting the Most Out of OpenClaw

A few tips that apply across all these use cases:

Use natural language. OpenClaw doesn’t require rigid commands. Talk to it the way you’d talk to a capable colleague. The underlying AI model handles the interpretation.

Use /think high for complex tasks. This triggers deeper reasoning from the AI model, which helps with multi-step tasks that require planning.

Start with consent mode on. Especially when you’re new, keep the exec.ask setting enabled so OpenClaw asks for your approval before executing commands. You can relax this as you build trust.

Check /status regularly. The /status command shows your session info, model, token usage, and cost when available. It’s helpful for keeping track of API spending.

Customize SOUL.md. This file defines your assistant’s personality, tone, and boundaries. Editing it lets you shape how OpenClaw communicates with you — whether you want it professional, casual, or somewhere in between.

Ready to Install?

If you haven’t set up OpenClaw yet, we have step-by-step guides for every platform:

Install OpenClaw on Mac

Install OpenClaw on Windows (WSL2)

Install OpenClaw on DigitalOcean

And make sure you understand the security implications before giving your AI assistant broad access to your system: Is OpenClaw safe? Read our security guide.