Find Skills

Helps discover and install skills for goclaw.

Triggers

Discovery requests:

• "find a skill for X", "is there a skill for X"

• "how do I do X" where X might have an existing skill

• "can you do X" for specialized capabilities

• "I need help with X"

Extension interest:

• "I wish I had X capability"

• "Is there a tool for X?"

• "extend agent capabilities"

• "add new functionality"

Management:

• "list skills", "show installed skills"

• "update skills", "remove skill"

• "install skill", "add skill"

Quick Start

List Installed Skills

goclaw skills list goclaw skills list --verbose # Show detailed info including content

Install from URL

From Git repository

goclaw skills install https://github.com/user/skill-repo

From local path

goclaw skills install ./path/to/skill

Validate Skills

Check if skill dependencies are satisfied

goclaw skills validate skill-name

Test Skills

Test a skill with a prompt

goclaw skills test skill-name --prompt "your test prompt here"

Skill Locations

Skills are stored in a unified location:

Location Description

~/.goclaw/skills

All skills (user-installed and built-in)

Built-in skills are automatically copied to this directory on first run.

Installing Skills

From Git Repository

Basic installation

goclaw skills install https://github.com/user/repo

The skill will be installed to ~/.goclaw/skills/<repo-name>

From Local Path

From a directory containing SKILL.md

goclaw skills install /path/to/skill

Updating Skills

Update a specific skill (must be a Git repo)

goclaw skills update skill-name

Uninstalling Skills

Remove a skill

goclaw skills uninstall skill-name

Finding Relevant Skills

1. Search Built-in Skills

Use goclaw skills list to see what's available:

goclaw skills list --verbose

2. Browse External Sources

Official goclaw skills: Check the project repository for bundled skills.

Community sources:

• GitHub: Search for goclaw skill or agent skill

• Skills compatible with OpenClaw/Agent Skills format can often be adapted

3. Check Skill Metadata

Each skill has a description field in its YAML frontmatter that indicates when it should be used:

name: crawl4ai description: This skill should be used when users need to scrape websites, extract structured data, handle JavaScript-heavy pages, or build automated web data pipelines.

Creating Custom Skills

If no existing skill meets your needs, create one:

Initialize New Skill

cd ~/.goclaw/skills mkdir my-skill cd my-skill

Create SKILL.md with proper frontmatter

SKILL.md Template

name: my-skill description: Brief description of what this skill does and when to use it. version: 1.0.0 author: Your Name metadata: openclaw: emoji: 🎯 always: false requires: bins: [] # Required binaries anyBins: [] # At least one of these must exist env: [] # Required environment variables config: [] # Required config keys os: [darwin, linux, windows]

My Skill

Overview

Brief description of what this skill does.

Triggers

When this skill should activate.

Quick Start

Basic usage examples.

Reference

Detailed documentation.

Best Practices

• Search first - Check if a skill already exists before creating

• Validate before use - Run goclaw skills validate <name> to check dependencies

• Test skills - Use goclaw skills test <name> to verify behavior

• Keep skills lean - Skills should be concise and focused

• Use references - Move detailed docs to references/ directory

Troubleshooting

Skill not found

Check skill is in correct location

ls -la ~/.goclaw/skills/

Verify skill has SKILL.md

ls ~/.goclaw/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md

Dependencies not satisfied

Validate to see what's missing

goclaw skills validate <skill-name>

Install missing binaries or set environment variables

Skill not loading

Check skill format is valid

cat ~/.goclaw/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md

YAML frontmatter must start with ---

and have a name and description field