ClawHub Quickstart: Find, Install, Update, and Publish Skills and Plugins

Quickstart

ClawHub acts as a central repository for OpenClaw skills and plugins.

When installing components into OpenClaw, work directly within OpenClaw itself. For signing in, publishing, managing your listings, or performing registry-specific tasks, reach for the clawhub command line tool.

Find and install a skill

Look up packages from OpenClaw:

openclaw skills search "calendar"

Add a skill:

openclaw skills install @openclaw/demo

Refresh installed skills:

openclaw skills update --all

OpenClaw tracks the origin of each skill so future updates continue to route through ClawHub.

Find and install a plugin

Query from OpenClaw:

openclaw plugins search "calendar"

Install a plugin hosted on ClawHub by specifying ClawHub as the source:

openclaw plugins install clawhub:<package>

Upgrade installed plugins:

openclaw plugins update --all

Prepend clawhub: when you need OpenClaw to fetch the package through ClawHub rather than npm or another registry.

Sign in for publishing

Set up the ClawHub CLI:

npm i -g clawhub
# or
pnpm add -g clawhub

Authenticate using your GitHub account:

clawhub login
clawhub whoami

In headless setups, generate an API token from the ClawHub web interface:

clawhub login --token clh_...

Publish a skill

A skill consists of a directory containing a mandatory SKILL.md file along with any supplementary files.

clawhub skill publish ./my-skill \
  --slug my-skill \
  --name "My Skill" \
  --changelog "Initial release"

This command skips content that hasn't changed. Fresh skills begin at 1.0.0; subsequent edits automatically produce the next patch version. Use --dry-run to see what would happen or --version to specify a particular version.

Before you publish, verify the settings in SKILL.md. List required environment variables, tools, and permissions so users know what the skill needs before they install it. Refer to the Skill format documentation.

For repositories that hold multiple skills, the reusable GitHub workflow runs skill publish for each immediate skill directory inside skills/:

jobs:
  preview:
    uses: openclaw/clawhub/.github/workflows/skill-publish.yml@main
    with:
      dry_run: true

Publish a plugin

Distribute a plugin from a local directory, a GitHub repository, a GitHub reference, or an existing archive:

clawhub package publish <source> --family code-plugin --dry-run
clawhub package publish <source> --family code-plugin

Run --dry-run first to examine the resolved package metadata, compatibility fields, source attribution, and upload plan without actually publishing.

Code plugins must carry OpenClaw compatibility metadata inside package.json, specifically openclaw.compat.pluginApi and openclaw.build.openclawVersion.

Inspect before installing

Before you install, check the ClawHub website or use CLI detail commands to review metadata, source links, versions, changelogs, and scan results:

clawhub inspect @openclaw/demo
clawhub package inspect <package>

Public listings display the most recent scan status. Releases that moderation has held or blocked may be hidden from search and install surfaces until the issue is resolved.