On this page
On this page
Get started
Experimental Template packages
Experimental Template packages
A Template is a versioned package that describes one complete OpenClaw agent and the reusable resources it needs. ClawHub stores and scans the package; OpenClaw owns local inspection, new-agent planning, consent, and addition.
Template publication and exact-name reads are available by default. Hosting a Template does not enable local preview or installation in OpenClaw.
Package lists and search include eligible community and official Templates, subject to the existing publication, visibility, scanning, moderation, and access rules. A scoped package's current publisher must remain active and match its scope; community entries show creator attribution without an Official badge.
The separate Official Template feed includes only canonical @openclaw/*
Templates owned by the active OpenClaw publisher organization with a current
Official designation. Revoking that designation does not by itself withdraw
published artifacts or otherwise eligible community catalog entries. A stored
feed without the current policy stamp is unavailable until a new snapshot is
published. If @openclaw loses Official status, an existing nonempty feed fails
closed with 503 and Cache-Control: no-store; publish a current empty or
newly authorized snapshot before serving it again.
Package shape
A publishable Template is a normal package directory with a package.json that
points to its manifest:
CLAW.md starts with the grouped Template manifest as YAML frontmatter. A non-empty
Markdown body is the portable agent prompt; OpenClaw applies its exact UTF-8
contents as the managed SOUL.md for the new agent.
Declare scheduled work under automations. Set enabled: false to create a paused
job for onboarding; omission preserves enabled behavior. The retired cronJobs key
is rejected with migration guidance. Existing archives and digests are preserved.
categories is optional and accepts one to three distinct lowercase slugs.
ClawHub accepts these categories for new releases: personal, health,
travel, productivity, research, engineering, governance, operations,
finance, sales, product, and people. Declared categories take precedence;
ClawHub rejects unrecognized slugs. When omitted, ClawHub attempts to classify
the Template from its manifest and documentation and uses Other if classification
is unavailable. To correct an inferred category, add categories to CLAW.md
and publish a new release.
Template packages use openclaw.template pointing to a safe package-relative
CLAW.md. The retired openclaw.claw selector and JSON package manifests are
rejected, including metadata that declares both selectors. Regenerate first-party
packages as new versions rather than rewriting any published archive or digest.
Do not combine a non-empty CLAW.md body with an explicit workspace file whose
portable destination is SOUL.md. ClawHub rejects that ambiguous dual source.
Headings and task lists in the body are prompt text, not package-time commands.
Every workspace.*.source must name a file in the same package. Assets such as
schemas, templates, examples, and images are portable ordinary workspace files;
place them under paths such as assets/, schemas/, or templates/ and declare
them in workspace.files. Package names and versions must match package.json,
dependency versions must be exact, and MCP environment values must remain
unresolved ${ENV_VAR} references.
Native settings and bootstrap
Keep native agent settings directly under agent in the same CLAW.md frontmatter.
Supported groups are groupChat, sandbox, tools, memory, heartbeat, and
humanDelay, alongside identity and purpose. tools.profile remains a native tool
policy selection; bounded tool-grant and memory-consent checks still apply.
Declare dependencies in top-level skills and plugins arrays. Each entry is
either an exact ClawHub {ref, version} reference or a package-local {path}
directory. Do not combine both forms. The collection determines its kind;
duplicate references within one kind and overlapping bundled directories are rejected.
A bundled skill includes its complete directory, including SKILL.md, scripts,
references and binary assets. Its SKILL.md must contain valid frontmatter and
a description. Plugin directories require an explicit supported native manifest:
openclaw.plugin.json, .codex-plugin/plugin.json, .claude-plugin/plugin.json,
or .cursor-plugin/plugin.json. Bundle manifests declare a name; native code
plugins declare an id/config schema plus package metadata and loadable entrypoints.
The selected root agent-bundle plugin.json format is unsupported. Native format
selection prefers Codex, Cursor, Claude, then OpenClaw metadata; an unrelated
root plugin.json does not override them. OpenClaw's native installers still
own host compatibility, security review, consent and local activation.
Bundled contents exclude .git and node_modules segments using portable case
folding. Eligible contents must be regular files with safe, noncolliding paths:
at most 1 MiB per file, 20 MiB across dependencies, 4096 files in total, 4096
entries per directory tree and 16 path levels. Links and nonregular archive entries
are rejected by the package artifact boundary. Build with OpenClaw so its selected
directory membership and bytes are preserved in the exact artifact.
The packages, extensions, and profiles fields, package-local profiles/
files, and metadata.openclaw.config pointer are retired. Move settings into
CLAW.md agent, dependencies into skills/plugins, and scheduled work into
automations. This simplification keeps schemaVersion: 1; no compatibility
adapter interprets the retired forms.
An optional package-root BOOTSTRAP.md contains first-run instructions. It is
seeded once and remains separate from the reusable prompt in the CLAW.md body.
Do not declare root BOOTSTRAP.md as a workspace destination; the path is reserved.
ClawHub includes bootstrap presence, but never its contents, in the bounded summary.
Validate, build, and publish
Validate the source project and build its deterministic artifact with OpenClaw:
Preview that exact artifact without uploading it, then publish it through the existing authenticated package flow:
The CLI detects family: template when package.json contains openclaw.template, so
--family template is optional for a well-formed package.
Experimental Template publication accepts only an already-built npm-pack .tgz,
not a source directory or GitHub checkout. The CLI sends the local artifact
SHA-256 with the request; ClawHub verifies it against the uploaded bytes before
publication and returns the same digest through pending and final responses.
Publication rejects:
- a missing, invalid, or escaping
openclaw.templatepath; - a source folder instead of a built
.tgz; - package identity or version mismatches;
- a missing or mismatched expected artifact SHA-256;
- malformed
CLAW.mdfrontmatter or manifest fields; - a non-empty
CLAW.mdbody combined with an explicitSOUL.mddestination; - missing workspace source files or portable path collisions;
- invalid package-root bootstrap instructions, retired profiles, or unsafe native agent settings;
- the retired
metadata.openclaw.configpointer; - floating skill/plugin versions and resolved MCP credentials.
Accepted packages continue through ClawHub's existing ownership, moderation, security scanning, release, and artifact storage pipeline. The stored release retains the exact artifact plus a non-sensitive summary and normalized dependency inventory for later search and detail surfaces; downloads return those same bytes and digest, and ClawHub does not duplicate the full manifest into Convex storage.
Discover published Templates
ClawHub exposes Templates through the existing package API:
List and search results use the normal package summary fields. Package and
version detail responses may also include templateManifestSummary, which reports
the agent identity and declared resource counts. templateInventory identifies
each dependency as ClawHub (ref, exact version) or bundled (path, optional
metadata-derived name). The website shows bundled paths without inventing
registry versions. The full manifest and dependency bytes remain in the artifact.
Projected bundled display names use the same 128-character bound as agent names.
The complete normalized dependency inventory is limited to 256 KiB for release
storage; this does not change the full native identity retained in the artifact.
Use category=other for Templates that could not be classified. Category filters
require family=template; unrecognized categories return a validation error.
Full manifests remain in exact artifacts and are never projected through public release responses.
Consume the experimental feed
ClawHub publishes eligible Official @openclaw Templates as a separate hosted feed:
This uses a dedicated experimental Template feed contract rather than extending the stable plugin/skill catalog feed v1 schema.
Each entry provides the exact package version, artifact SHA-256, publisher
trust, and templateManifestSummary. Consumers resolve and verify that artifact,
unpack it as a normal Template package directory, and pass the directory to
OpenClaw for local inspection or templates add --dry-run. ClawHub does not bypass
OpenClaw's preview or consent boundary.
The feed route returns 503 until a current Official Template snapshot is published.
Run the repeatable registry-to-OpenClaw proof against an OpenClaw Templates checkout with:
The proof serves a deterministic hosted feed and package artifact, verifies the
feed and downloaded digests, extracts the package, and invokes the actual
OpenClaw source CLI with templates add --dry-run --json in an isolated state
directory.
