The 20 Best OpenClaw Skills to Install First — And What Each One Does

OpenClaw has over 13,700 skills on ClawHub. Here are the 20 that deliver the most value immediately — what they do, why they matter and how to install each one.

Out of the box, OpenClaw can answer questions, manage files and run basic commands. With the right skills installed, it becomes a genuinely different system — one that can control your browser, manage your email, process documents, monitor your home and automate almost any repetitive workflow. Here are the 20 skills that should be your first installs.

Installing Skills

Every skill in this list is available on ClawHub. Install any skill with:

openclaw skills install [skill-name]

Category 1: Information and Research

web-search gives your agent real-time web search capability. Without it, your agent is limited to its training data. With it, it can find current information on any topic instantly. This is arguably the most important skill to install first.

youtube-summariser extracts transcripts from YouTube videos and produces structured summaries. For research, learning and staying current on a topic, this skill transforms video content into actionable text in seconds.

exa-search is a developer-focused search engine that pulls from GitHub, technical documentation and coding forums. Better than general web search for anything technical.

Category 2: Productivity and Files

file-organiser handles bulk file operations — organising by type, date or custom rules, renaming files with inconsistent names, moving files between folders and reporting what it did. This single skill saves most people 30-60 minutes per week.

email-manager reads, summarises and drafts emails via Gmail OAuth. Set it to flag urgent messages each morning or draft replies based on your context and preferences.

calendar-assistant creates events, checks availability, sends invitations and reschedules meetings — all via natural language with Google Calendar.

pdf-processor extracts text from any PDF, summarises it, translates it and answers questions about its content. Drop a contract in your monitored folder and ask anything about it.

notion-sync reads from and writes to Notion databases. Take meeting notes directly to Notion, query your knowledge base from any messaging app.

Category 3: Automation and Integration

browser-control gives your agent full browser automation via Playwright — navigate pages, click elements, fill forms, extract content and take screenshots. Essential for any web interaction that cannot be done via API.

n8n-workflow triggers n8n automation workflows from OpenClaw messages. Chat-driven control over complex automations you have already built in n8n.

home-assistant connects to Home Assistant and lets you control smart devices, lights, heating and sensors via natural language. Fully local, no cloud needed.

Category 4: Privacy and Voice

whisper-local transcribes audio files completely locally using OpenAI's Whisper model. Private, fast, no third-party audio processing whatsoever.

memory-logger logs everything you tell your agent to remember in a structured, searchable format. The foundation of a genuinely personalised AI assistant.