#153 How to Set Up OpenClaw in 7 Minutes (Step-by-Step Guide)

Show Notes

Grab the free one-page OpenClaw setup guide with every step and command listed out: https://corey-ganim.kit.com/c93f43577e

I walk through the complete OpenClaw setup process from zero to a working AI agent connected to Telegram — all in under seven minutes. You'll see every step: running the installer, configuring your Anthropic API key, creating a Telegram bot through BotFather, pairing it to your OpenClaw instance, and enabling web search with DuckDuckGo. One prerequisite, one terminal command, and you're live.

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Key Takeaways:

• OpenClaw installs with a single terminal command — the only prerequisite is having Node.js installed, which is also a one-command setup
• The guided onboarding handles every configuration decision (model, API key, channel, search) through simple yes/no prompts — no manual config files
• Creating a Telegram bot through BotFather takes about 60 seconds: message BotFather, run /newbot, choose a name ending in "bot," and copy the token
• DuckDuckGo is the fastest search provider to start with because it requires zero additional API keys or setup
• Skills and hooks can be added after the initial install — you don't need to configure everything before getting your agent running
• The OpenClaw control panel gives you a browser-based chat window plus access to channels, sessions, usage stats, cron jobs, files, skills, and nodes

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction

00:02 - Running the OpenClaw installer from the terminal 00:30 - Node.js prerequisite (quick install)

00:45 - Guided onboarding: Quick Start setup

01:05 - Choosing Anthropic as your model provider

01:20 - Entering your Anthropic API key

01:35 - Selecting Claude Sonnet 4.6

01:52 - Creating a Telegram bot with BotFather

02:45 - Naming your bot and choosing a username

03:15 - Connecting the bot token to OpenClaw

03:30 - Enabling DuckDuckGo web search

03:45 - Skipping skills and hooks (configurable later)

04:06 - OpenClaw control panel overview

04:30 - First chat with your bot in the browser

05:15 - Pairing the bot with your Telegram account

06:10 - First Telegram message confirmed

06:30 - Setup complete — next steps for personalization

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Links Mentioned:

• OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai
• Anthropic API Console: https://console.anthropic.com
• BotFather (Telegram): https://t.me/BotFather
• DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com
• Node.js: https://nodejs.org

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Corey Ganim: First thing we're going to do is we're going to open the terminal. And keep in mind the command that I'm going to run because I'm on Windows is a little bit different than what you run if you're on Mac, but I'll give you guys the Mac command as well. So all you do is you copy and paste one simple little command here and you press enter. And what it's going to do is it's going to go through the open claw installer. Now, one of the prerequisites is you've got to have node.js installed first, which again is another super simple copy and paste one command into the terminal and then it's done. So we're going to let that run and I'll be back. once it's ready. All right, so it's saying OpenClaw installed. Now it's going to refresh the gateway and then it's going to pop open a new screen and I'll show you where we go from there. All right, so that's going to take a couple of seconds to run and once it's done, it's going to show you here OpenClaw. We're basically going through the setup here, the guided onboarding. So they're going to give you a little like yes or no question. Basically, you're just going to put yes here. So we're going to click Yes. And then Setup Mode, we want to do Quick Start. And then I'm going to do Use Existing Values, because I've done this on my computer before. I'm just showing it again as an example. And so now it's going to ask you what model you want to use. So for the sake of this example, we're just going to choose Anthropic. And then you're going to give it your Anthropic API key. So I'm going to pause and come back once I've entered that. All right, so all I did was copy and paste my API key from Anthropic, which again, you can just Google Anthropic API key, you log into your Claude and you generate a key. takes like 10 seconds. And it's going to ask me what model I want to run. So let's just say Claude Sonnet 46 for now. And now it's going to ask what channel do I want to connect? So Telegram is, it even says recommended newcomer friendly. So we're going to set up a Telegram bot. I'm going to show you guys how to do that. So it's literally going to walk us through how to do that. We open Telegram and we're going to do that here. So we're looking at Telegram. We're going to start a new chat with, oops, how do we start a new chat here? So we click the menu in the top left and then do contacts, add contact. Sorry, we don't add contact up here at search. You're just going to search at bot father. And then he comes up right here. And so all you're going to do is you're going to click start and then run backslash new bot. What are we going to call it? It's going to say, please choose a name. So let's just say, Queries test bot claw. Now let's choose a username. So it's got an end in bots. We're going to say Queries test bot. ⁓ that's the one I used for my earlier test. So let's just say Queries test bot one. It's got to end in bot. Queries open claw bot. There we go. So now that we've got the bot, it's saying, how do you want to provide this Telegram bot token? You just enter it. So all we do is copy this token here. Press enter, enter the bot token, enter, and then there you go. So now it's connected to Telegram and it's asking us next, which search provider do we want to use? So basically what internet searching capability do we want to give it? I'm just choosing DuckDuckGo for the sake of this example, because it doesn't require any additional setup. Just click enter. So now web search is enabled. It can use DuckDuckGo to search the internet. Now it's going to ask, do you want to configure any skills for right now? And so again, for the sake of this example, just going to say no because we're just going through the setup. And skills are really easy to configure after the facts. We just hit no. Now it's going to ask us if we want to enable any hooks. And it says hooks let you automate actions when agent commands are issued. So again, for the sake of this example, I'm just going to skip for now. And now we are good to go. So it's completely installed. It is going to ask us if we want to restart, reinstall, or skip. So I'm just going to skip. And I'll show you how we now talk with our bot. All right, so now that it shows us onboarding is complete, what it's going to do is it's going to open up this tab in your browser here, which is basically where you can chat with your bot inside the browser before you fully connect it to Telegram or WhatsApp or wherever you want to connect it. So now we can just message our assistant. We'll just say, are you alive? and it should reply to us any second. But this is kind of the default open claw control panel. So this is the chat window where you can chat with it. This is where you can see all the channels that it's connected to, sessions, usage, cron jobs. This is gonna be all your files, your skills, your nodes, anything that you can kind of connect and update within your agent. And so it said, well, he said, are you alive? It said, yep, I'm here. I just came online, no memory. Who are you and who am I supposed to be? So the next step, which we'll get into back in the live presentation, is how we set up the agents.md, user.md, and sole.md. Now the last step here is just fully configuring it with Telegram. So we can chat with it in Telegram from our phone or our computer or anywhere we want instead of having to do it here through the browser. So in Telegram, when we named our bot, it said done, congrats on your new bot. You will find it at this channel. So if we click this channel. It's going to open up a chat with our new bot. And so we click Start. it's saying, first thing it's going to say is open call access not configured. And it's going to give you a user ID and a pairing code. So all you have to do is copy this command, which I'll show you in a second. So we basically just have to run a quick command in the terminal to pair our new bot with our Telegram account. And that command is just open call pairing approve Telegram and then the pairing code ID here, which I'm using one from the old examples. So I give you a new one, WTSB5GK. That should be it. So we run that. And then, Now it says approved telegram sender. So now if we go back into our telegram chat, might take a second to pick it up. Let's just say, are you alive? We see it's typing here at the top. So it is working. and sometimes it takes a couple of seconds to respond, but it'll probably say something similar as to what it said here in the browser. says, alive enough to notice, I don't know who I am yet. So there you go. So there in six and a half minutes, we've got our OpenClaw fully set up on our local machine connected to Telegram. And now we can start to build all the files that turn it into a much more personalized bot.