Skills

Skills are how OpenClaw teaches agents how to use tools. They follow an AgentSkills-style directory structure, center on a SKILL.md file with frontmatter and are gated at load time based on environment, config and available binaries.

Skills Configuration Plugin Tools Overview

Load Locations and Precedence

Builtin

Bundled Skills

Shipped with the install package. These have the lowest precedence.

Hosted

~/.openclaw/skills

A machine-wide local Skills repository shared by all agents on the same host.

Workspace

<workspace>/skills

The highest-precedence location, scoped to the current workspace and agent.

Minimal Format

SKILL.md frontmatter

---
name: nano-banana-pro
description: Generate or edit images via Gemini 3 Pro Image
---

Example gating metadata

metadata:
  {
    "openclaw": {
      "requires": {
        "bins": ["uv"],
        "env": ["GEMINI_API_KEY"],
        "config": ["browser.enabled"]
      },
      "primaryEnv": "GEMINI_API_KEY"
    }
  }

Rules to Remember

When Skills share the same name, precedence is workspace > ~/.openclaw/skills > bundled.

skills.load.extraDirs can add more scan directories, but they are still lower priority than the standard paths.

Treat third-party Skills as untrusted code until reviewed. For high-risk tools, combine them with sandbox isolation instead of blind trust.