OpenClaw for beginners — your first automation

An automation is a task you'd normally do manually — that you set up once and let OpenClaw handle going forward.

Examples:

• Every morning at 8am, summarise your unread emails and send the summary to your phone
• When a new lead fills in your contact form, add them to your CRM and send a follow-up email
• Every Friday, pull your week's calendar events and write a summary of what you accomplished

The pattern is always the same: trigger → action → output. Something happens (trigger), OpenClaw does something (action), and the result goes somewhere (output).

Make sure you have:

• OpenClaw installed and running (install guide here)
• At least one skill installed — we'll use gmail and reminders for this guide
• A connected channel — Telegram or WhatsApp recommended so you can receive the output on your phone

If you're missing any of these, set them up first. This guide will still be here.

We're going to build this: every morning at 8am, OpenClaw checks your Gmail, summarises your unread emails, and sends you the summary via Telegram.

This is one of the most useful automations you can build. It takes 10 minutes to set up and saves you from context-switching to your inbox first thing every morning.

Step 1 — Make sure the required skills are installed

openclaw skills install gmail
openclaw skills install reminders
openclaw skills list

Confirm both appear in your list as active.

Step 2 — Connect your Telegram channel

If you want the digest sent to your phone, connect Telegram:

openclaw channels add telegram

Follow the prompts. You'll need to scan a QR code or enter a code in the Telegram app. It takes about 3 minutes. If you'd rather receive it in the OpenClaw web dashboard instead, skip this step.

Step 3 — Test the manual version first

Before automating anything, make sure it works manually. In your OpenClaw dashboard or through your Telegram channel, send this message:

"Check my Gmail for unread emails from today. Summarise them in bullet points — sender name, subject, and one sentence about what it's about. If there are no unread emails, just tell me the inbox is clear."

OpenClaw should read your emails and return a clean summary. If it doesn't work, check:

openclaw daemon logs

Step 4 — Set up the automation

Now we automate it. Send this message to OpenClaw:

"Set up a daily automation: every morning at 8am, check my Gmail for unread emails, summarise them in bullet points (sender, subject, one sentence each), and send the summary to me on Telegram. If there are no unread emails, send a message saying the inbox is clear."

OpenClaw will confirm the automation is set up. You can also set this up directly in your config:

{
  "automations": [
    {
      "name": "morning-email-digest",
      "schedule": "0 8 * * *",
      "task": "Check Gmail for unread emails. Summarise each one as: sender name, subject line, one sentence summary. Send the summary to Telegram. If no unread emails, send: 'Inbox clear ✓'",
      "channel": "telegram"
    }
  ]
}

The schedule uses cron format: 0 8 * * * means 8:00am every day. Change it to 0 7 * * 1-5 for 7am on weekdays only.

Step 5 — Test the automation

Don't wait until 8am tomorrow to find out if it works. Trigger it manually:

openclaw automations run morning-email-digest

Check that you receive the summary on Telegram (or in your dashboard). If you do — it's working. You're done.

Step 6 — Verify it's scheduled

openclaw automations list

You should see morning-email-digest listed as active with the next scheduled run time. If it shows up, it will run automatically going forward.

Your automation has three parts:

• Trigger: A cron schedule (0 8 * * *) that fires at 8am daily
• Action: OpenClaw reads your Gmail using the gmail skill, processes the results with your AI model, and formats the output
• Output: The result is sent to your Telegram channel

OpenClaw's gateway runs in the background as a daemon (because you used --install-daemon during setup). This means it keeps running even when you close your laptop — the automation fires at 8am whether you're at your computer or not.

Every automation follows the same structure. Once you understand it, you can build almost anything.

1. Define the trigger

• Time-based: "every day at 8am", "every Monday morning", "every hour"
• Event-based: "when I receive an email from...", "when a new form is submitted..."

2. Define the action — be specific. The more specific your instruction, the more reliable the result.

• Bad: "check my emails"
• Good: "check my Gmail for unread emails from the last 24 hours. For each one, extract the sender name, subject line, and the main ask or question."

3. Define the output

• Where should the result go? Telegram, WhatsApp, Gmail, Notion, a file, the dashboard?
• What format? Bullet points, a paragraph, a table, a JSON file?

Write it out in plain English, send it to OpenClaw, and it will set it up. Refine it if the first version isn't quite right — just tell it what to change.

Now that you understand the pattern, here are 4 more worth building:

Weekly calendar summary
"Every Friday at 5pm, check my Google Calendar for this week's events. Write a short summary of what I worked on and send it to Telegram."

Daily focus reminder
"Every morning at 9am, ask me what my top 3 priorities are for today. Wait for my reply. Then send me a reminder at 3pm with those 3 priorities."

Email follow-up tracker
"Every weekday at 10am, check my Gmail for emails I sent more than 3 days ago that haven't received a reply. List them with the recipient name, subject, and date sent. Send the list to Telegram."

Newsletter digest
"Every Sunday at 9am, check my Gmail for newsletters received this week. Summarise the most interesting 3 articles or stories across all of them. Send to Telegram."

Automation ran but I didn't receive anything

Check the channel connection:

openclaw channels status

Also check the logs for the automation run:

openclaw daemon logs --filter morning-email-digest

Automation isn't triggering at the scheduled time

Make sure the daemon is running:

openclaw gateway status

If it shows stopped, start it:

openclaw gateway start

The summary isn't quite right

You can refine the automation's instructions anytime. Tell OpenClaw: "Update the morning email digest automation — instead of bullet points, format each email as a single line: [Sender] — [Subject] — [Summary]"

Or edit it directly in your config file.

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