How to Use the Clawbot AI Agent: OpenClaw Automation with Scheduling, Browser Control, and Webhooks

Commands follow the OpenClaw official docs as of September 2026. To install first, see the OpenClaw installation guide.

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What Can OpenClaw's AI Agent Automate?

The five everyday use cases from the official FAQ:

1. Personal briefings: summaries of your inbox, calendar, and the news you care about
2. Research and drafting: quick research, summaries, and first drafts of emails or docs
3. Reminders and follow-ups: scheduled or heartbeat-driven nudges and checklists
4. Browser automation: filling forms, collecting data, repetitive web tasks
5. Cross-device coordination: hand off a task from your phone, let the server run it, and get the result back in chat

The project also recommends splitting large tasks into phases and using sub-agents for parallel work, rather than handing over one huge task at once.

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Which Automation Should You Use? The Official Decision Table

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Hands-On 1: Schedule Work with Automations

Automations is OpenClaw's built-in scheduler. It persists jobs, wakes the agent at the right time, and can deliver output to a chat channel, a webhook, or nowhere. Manage it with openclaw automations (the older openclaw cron remains an alias for the same commands).

A one-shot reminder

The official example:

openclaw automations create "2027-02-01T16:00:00Z" \
  --name "Reminder" \
  --session main \
  --system-event "Reminder: check the automations docs draft" \
  --wake now \
  --delete-after-run

Timestamps without a timezone are treated as UTC; add --tz with your timezone (for example --tz Asia/Taipei).

Send a briefing to Telegram every morning at 9

Schedules use --every (a fixed interval such as 30m or 1d) or --cron (a cron expression, optionally with --tz). To deliver to Telegram, use --announce --channel telegram --to "<chat ID>". Put together, it looks roughly like this:

openclaw automations add \
  --name "Morning briefing" \
  --cron "0 9 * * *" \
  --tz Asia/Taipei \
  --session isolated \
  --message "Summarize today's calendar and important unread email as bullet points" \
  --announce --channel telegram --to "<your Telegram chat ID>"

Defer to the official Automations docs for flags; if a version changes them, check openclaw automations --help and the docs.

View and manage jobs

openclaw automations list
openclaw automations get <job-id>
openclaw automations runs <job-id>

You can also use the Automations editor in the web Control UI. There is a built-in safety backstop: a time-based recurring job is auto-disabled after 10 consecutive failures.

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Hands-On 2: Let an Agent Drive a Browser

OpenClaw's browser automation has two modes:

Mode A: The agent-only browser (recommended default)

OpenClaw can run a separate browser profile named openclaw (Chrome, Brave, Edge, or Chromium), controlled by a local service inside the Gateway, that never touches your personal browser profile. The agent can:

• Open, focus, and close tabs
• Click, type, drag, and select
• Take page snapshots, screenshots, and PDFs
• Answer questions over the readable page text

The project stresses that this browser is not your daily driver; it is an isolated surface for agent automation and verification.

Mode B: Work in your signed-in Chrome

If a task needs your signed-in state (for example an admin dashboard), install the official Chrome extension:

openclaw browser extension install

The extension is automation infrastructure for the agent and has no chat box. Its popup shows the connection state and access mode, with a Pause/Allow action for the current tab.

You can also put the browser on another machine or use a third-party hosted browser service, but you set that up yourself. OpenClaw has no official hosted cloud browser.

Browser automation risks

A real browser exposes your signed-in sessions and page content. The official security docs warn that web content can carry prompt injection; give access only to the tabs you need, and read the official "Browser control risks" page.

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Hands-On 3: Trigger an Agent from External Services with Webhooks (Including n8n)

The Gateway's inbound webhooks let an external service wake an agent or submit an agent turn over HTTP. They are disabled by default. The official configuration example (merged into your OpenClaw config):

{
  hooks: {
    enabled: true,
    token: "<long-random-hook-token>",
    path: "/hooks",
    allowedAgentIds: ["main"],
    allowRequestSessionKey: false,
  },
}

Then:

openclaw config validate
openclaw gateway restart
openclaw logs --follow

External services send requests to http://127.0.0.1:18789/hooks/agent with the header Authorization: Bearer <your hook token>.

Connecting n8n

The official docs have no dedicated n8n integration, but n8n, Zapier, and similar tools can all send HTTP requests, so you can:

1. Enable webhooks in OpenClaw with a dedicated long random token (not the Gateway auth token or password)
2. In n8n, use an HTTP node to call the hook endpoint above with that token
3. If n8n runs on a different machine, handle the network path separately; read the official exposure and security guides before exposing the Gateway

For the opposite direction (OpenClaw sending results out), use webhook delivery in Automations.

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Other Automation Mechanisms

Heartbeat: background monitoring

A system-owned monitor that runs every 30 minutes by default, watching the main session for follow-ups and alerting only when needed.

Hooks: react to events

Scripts defined in HOOK.md react to lifecycle events such as a session reset; plugins can also register hooks that intercept tool calls. These are separate from the inbound webhooks above.

Standing orders: persistent instructions

Instructions injected into every session automatically, such as "always check this policy before replying."

Sub-agents

Delegate work to sub-agents and wait for the results, useful for splitting large tasks and running them in parallel.

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Before You Roll It Out

• Human approval: the project recommends keeping a human in the loop for outreach emails and ad runs; let the agent draft, then approve
• Least privilege: unless you configure sandboxing, tools run directly on the host; enable only the tools and channels you need
• Treat web pages and messages as untrusted: guard against prompt injection
• Teams share one trust domain: people who don't trust each other need separate Gateways
• Audit regularly: openclaw security audit

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FAQ

Does OpenClaw have "Browser Relay" or "Antigravity" features?

OpenClaw has no module called Antigravity; that is a Google developer tool. Browser Relay is not a standalone remote-browser feature either — the official docs use the term for the relay connection between the Chrome extension and the Gateway. Browser automation runs through the agent-only browser profile or the official Chrome extension.

Can I use Firefox?

The official docs list Chromium-family browsers such as Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Chromium; there is no documented Firefox support.

How does OpenClaw integrate with n8n?

There is no dedicated official integration. Enable OpenClaw's inbound webhooks so n8n can trigger an agent with HTTP requests; in the other direction, use webhook delivery in Automations to send results out.

How do I schedule in my local timezone?

Add --tz with your timezone, for example --tz Asia/Taipei. Without it, there are two cases: an --at timestamp with no timezone is treated as UTC, while a --cron expression uses the Gateway host's timezone. Note that --tz cannot be combined with --every.

Will a failing automation keep retrying forever?

A time-based recurring job is auto-disabled after 10 consecutive failures; a successful run resets that streak.

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References

1. OpenClaw docs, "What is OpenClaw?" (everyday use cases) - https://docs.openclaw.ai/help/faq/what-is-openclaw
2. OpenClaw docs, "Automation" - https://docs.openclaw.ai/automation
3. OpenClaw docs, "Automations" (scheduling) - https://docs.openclaw.ai/automation/cron-jobs
4. OpenClaw docs, "Inbound webhooks" - https://docs.openclaw.ai/automation/cron-jobs/webhooks
5. OpenClaw docs, "Browser (OpenClaw-managed)" - https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/browser
6. OpenClaw docs, "Chrome Extension" - https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/chrome-extension
7. OpenClaw docs, "Security" - https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/security