This post contains notes on how to set up and configure skills in OpenClaw.

Workspace Setup

  1. Since I already have used OpenClaw and has some configs in ~/.openclaw/workspace, I needed to back that up. I created a private Bitbucket repo for that:

     cd ~/.openclaw/workspace
 git remote add origin git@bitbucket.org:ylxiong/openclaw.git
 git push -u origin main

  2. Pull that directory to a non-hidden directory, say ~/src/openclaw.

     cd ~/src
 git clone git@bitbucket.org:ylxiong/openclaw.git

  3. Configure OpenClaw to use that new workspace directory:

     openclaw config set agents.defaults.workspace /Users/yxiong/src/openclaw
 openclaw gateway restart

  4. Verify the settings:

     openclaw config get agents

Create a stock-price skill

  1. Create a skills/ folder in the workspace like this

     ~/src/openclaw
 |- skills/
 |  |- stock-price/
 |     |- SKILLS.md
 |     |- scripts/
 |        |- tools.py
 |- AGENTS.md
 |- SOUL.md
 |- ...

  2. Implement the skill

    • The SKILLS.md file:

         ---
   name: stock-price
   description: "Helper for fetching a live stock price via Yahoo Finance."
   ---

   # Stock Price Skill

   - Install once: `pip install yfinance`
   - Helper lives at `skills/stock-price/scripts/tools.py`

   ## Usage

   ```python
   from skills.stock_price.scripts.tools import get_stock_price
   get_stock_price("APPL")  # {"price": 260.48, "currency": "USD"}
   ```

   ```bash
   /usr/bin/python3 skills/stock-price/scripts/tools.py MSFT
   # {"symbol": MSFT", "price": 370.87, "currency": "USD}
   ```

    • The scripts/tools.py file:

         import json, sys, yfinance as yf

   def get_stock_price(symbol: str) -> dict:
       last = yf.Ticker(symbol).fast_info.last_price
       return {"price": round(last, 2), "currency": "USD"}

   if __name__ == "__main__":
       symbol = sys.argv[1].upper()
       print(json.dumps(get_stock_price(symbol)))

  3. Verify that the skill is included

     openclaw skills list

  4. Use the skill, like “What is the stock price of Google?”

    • We can verify that the tool is used from the web portal. stock-price-tool
    • If the tool is not used, OpenClaw can still get the answer, but it will be using web_fetch and presumably consumer more tokens. web-tool

References