How to Install OpenClaw in Your Slack Workspace

What You're Actually Installing

Before diving into the steps, it's worth being clear about what's happening under the hood. OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent framework — think of it as the brain. SlackClaw is the product that brings that brain into your Slack workspace, wraps it with a production-ready server, wires it up to 800+ tools, and gives your team a way to interact with it without ever leaving Slack.

When you install SlackClaw, you're not just adding another Slack bot. You're provisioning a dedicated server for your team, connecting an autonomous agent that can take multi-step actions across your toolstack, and giving it persistent memory so it actually gets smarter about your workflows over time. That's meaningfully different from a chatbot that forgets everything the moment you close the tab.

Before You Begin

What You'll Need

• A Slack workspace where you have Admin or Owner permissions (you need these to authorize third-party app installations)
• A SlackClaw account — you can sign up at slackclaw.com; there's no credit card required to start
• About 10 minutes for the initial setup
• Optional but recommended: a list of the tools your team uses daily (GitHub, Linear, Notion, Gmail, etc.) so you can connect them right after setup

If you're not the workspace admin, you can still get the process started — SlackClaw will generate an approval request your admin can review and approve directly from their email or Slack notifications.

Step 1: Create Your SlackClaw Account

Head to slackclaw.com and click Get Started. You can sign up with your Google account or a work email. Once you're in, you'll land on the onboarding dashboard. This is where your dedicated server gets provisioned — it usually takes under 30 seconds.

You'll see a status indicator that moves through three states:

1. Initializing — SlackClaw is spinning up your isolated server environment
2. Configuring Agent — OpenClaw is being initialized with your team's default settings
3. Ready to Connect — you're good to go

Each team gets their own server, which matters for a few reasons: your data doesn't share infrastructure with other organizations, you can configure the agent's behavior specifically for your team, and memory is stored and scoped entirely to your workspace.

Step 2: Connect SlackClaw to Your Workspace

From the dashboard, click Add to Slack. This will open Slack's standard OAuth authorization screen. You'll see a list of permissions SlackClaw is requesting — things like reading messages in channels it's added to, sending messages, and managing its own app configuration.

Review the permissions, then click Allow. Slack will redirect you back to the SlackClaw dashboard with a success confirmation.

At this point, SlackClaw has created a bot user in your workspace. You'll find it listed under Apps in your Slack sidebar. Try opening the app and sending a quick message: Learn more about our integrations directory.

Hello! What can you help me with?

You should get a response within a few seconds explaining what OpenClaw can do and prompting you to connect your first tool. That's your agent, live and running on your dedicated server. Learn more about our pricing page.

Step 3: Connect Your Tools

This is where SlackClaw starts earning its keep. The integration library covers 800+ tools across every category you'd expect: project management, code, communication, data, finance, HR, and more. Every connection is one-click OAuth — no API keys to copy-paste, no developer involvement required.

Recommended Integrations to Set Up First

Start with the tools your team touches every single day. Here are some high-impact connections and what they unlock:

• GitHub — Let the agent open pull requests, summarize recent commits, check CI status, or triage issues on command
• Linear or Jira — Create tickets, update statuses, assign work, and get sprint summaries without switching context
• Notion — Read and write pages, search your knowledge base, and have the agent draft documentation directly into your workspace
• Gmail or Outlook — Draft replies, search email threads, and surface important messages based on a project or contact
• Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar — Schedule meetings, check availability, and get daily briefings

To connect a tool, navigate to the Integrations tab in your SlackClaw dashboard, find the tool you want, and click Connect. You'll be walked through a standard OAuth flow for that service. Once authorized, the integration is immediately available to your agent.

Pro tip: Connect at least three to five tools before you start using the agent heavily. The more context OpenClaw has about your environment, the more useful its responses become. An agent that can see your GitHub repos, your Linear board, and your Notion docs can answer questions no single-tool bot ever could.

Step 4: Invite the Agent to Channels

By default, SlackClaw only listens in your direct messages with the app. To use it in team channels, you need to invite it explicitly — which is actually good practice, since you probably don't want the agent monitoring every channel in your workspace.

Go to the channel where you want the agent available and type:

/invite @SlackClaw

Once invited, team members can summon the agent by mentioning it directly:

@SlackClaw can you pull the last 5 merged PRs from the main branch and summarize what changed?

The agent will execute the request, interact with your connected GitHub integration, and post the summary back to the channel. Everyone sees it. No one had to leave Slack, open a terminal, or write a script.

Step 5: Configure Persistent Memory and Agent Behavior

One of the things that sets SlackClaw apart from simpler Slack bots is persistent memory. The agent remembers context across conversations — things like your team's naming conventions, recurring projects, who owns what, and preferences you've expressed in past interactions.

Setting Initial Context

You can seed the agent's memory directly from the dashboard under Agent Settings → Memory. Add things like:

• Your team's name and what you work on
• Key project names and their associated repos or boards
• Preferred response styles (concise vs. detailed, bullet points vs. prose)
• Any terminology or conventions specific to your org

You can also teach the agent on the fly by telling it directly in a message: For related insights, see OpenClaw for Slack: A Manager's Guide to AI Adoption.

@SlackClaw remember that we call our staging environment "canary" not "staging"

It will acknowledge the update and apply it going forward — in that conversation and every future one.

Custom Skills

If your team has workflows that don't fit neatly into a single tool integration, you can define custom skills — essentially named, reusable workflows the agent can execute on demand. For example, you could create a skill called Weekly Standup Prep that pulls recent GitHub activity, checks open Linear tickets assigned to the requestor, and drafts a bullet-point summary. Once defined, anyone on the team can trigger it with a single message.

Understanding Credits and Pricing

SlackClaw uses credit-based pricing rather than per-seat fees. This is worth understanding because it changes how you think about rollout. You're not paying for every person who has access to the bot — you're paying for the actual work the agent does.

Simpler tasks like fetching data or answering a quick question use fewer credits. Complex, multi-step autonomous tasks — like researching a topic, drafting a doc, updating three different tools, and posting a summary — use more. This model tends to work in teams' favor, especially when usage is uneven across members.

You can monitor credit usage from the dashboard and set spending alerts so you never hit an unexpected bill. Credits roll over on monthly plans, and you can add more at any time without changing your plan tier. For related insights, see OpenClaw Slack + Google Drive Integration: File Management.

You're Live — Now Make It Stick

The teams that get the most out of SlackClaw are the ones that make the agent part of their actual workflow, not just something they demo once and forget. A few habits that help:

• Start with one repetitive task you currently do manually and delegate it to the agent for a week
• Share useful interactions in a team channel — seeing a colleague use the agent effectively is the fastest way to drive adoption
• Build a few custom skills for your team's most common multi-step workflows within the first two weeks
• Review the memory log monthly to prune anything outdated and add new context as your projects evolve

OpenClaw running inside Slack via SlackClaw isn't magic — it's a well-connected, context-aware agent that gets more useful the more you engage with it. The installation takes ten minutes. The value compounds over months.