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Migrate from OpenClaw (and use clawhub skills)

Ethos is OpenClaw-compatible. If you have an existing OpenClaw install, you can migrate it in one command. And whether you migrate or start fresh, you can install any clawhub skill directly into your personality's toolset — the full catalog runs unmodified.

1. Migrate an existing OpenClaw install​

The CLI ships with a migrator that reads ~/.openclaw/ and writes to ~/.ethos/ without touching the source.

Preview first​

ethos claw migrate --dry-run

You'll get a printed plan that lists:

  • memories — MEMORY.md, USER.md, plus any auxiliary memory files
  • skills — every installed skill directory
  • platform tokens — Slack, Discord, Telegram, email
  • API keys — provider keys from your existing config
  • personality — either resolved to a built-in match or migrated from your SOUL.md

Nothing is written.

Apply the migration​

ethos claw migrate            # interactive — prompts before writing
ethos claw migrate -y         # skip the confirmation prompt
ethos claw migrate --overwrite -y     # clobber existing target files
ethos claw migrate --preset user-data # skip the personality copy

The migration is idempotent — re-running it after a partial run is safe. If a target file already exists, the migrator skips it (or overwrites with --overwrite).

What gets copied​

Source (under ~/.openclaw/)Target (under ~/.ethos/)
MEMORY.md, USER.md, *.md memory filessame names
skills/<slug>/skills/<slug>/
Platform tokens in config.yamlmerged into ~/.ethos/config.yaml
Provider API keysmerged into ~/.ethos/config.yaml
SOUL.md (if present)becomes a personality under ~/.ethos/personalities/migrated/

After migration, run ethos setup if you want to verify your config or change the active personality.

Source not found​

If ~/.openclaw/config.yaml doesn't exist, the command exits without changes:

No OpenClaw install found at /Users/you/.openclaw.

You can still use ethos skills install independently — see below.

2. Install any clawhub skill​

The ethos skills command wraps clawhub. It uses a globally-installed clawhub if available, otherwise falls back to npx clawhub@latest.

ethos skills install steipete/slack          # by clawhub slug
ethos skills install github:owner/repo       # by GitHub source
ethos skills install github:owner/repo/path  # nested skill in a repo

ethos skills list                            # show installed slugs
ethos skills update                           # update all
ethos skills update <slug>                    # update one
ethos skills remove <slug>                    # remove one

Skills install into ~/.ethos/skills/ and become available to any personality whose toolset.yaml lists them.

How OpenClaw skills run inside Ethos​

The OpenClaw-compatibility layer in extensions/skills/skill-compat.ts handles three things:

  1. Frontmatter parsing — reads the YAML header in each SKILL.md
  2. Environment substitutions — resolves ${ENV_VAR} references at load time
  3. OS gates — honours os: [darwin, linux] style requirements and skips skills that don't match the host

So the entire clawhub catalog is reachable without forking or maintaining a shim layer.

Where skills live on disk​

~/.ethos/skills/
├── steipete/
│   └── slack/
│       └── SKILL.md
└── owner/
    └── repo/
        └── SKILL.md

ethos skills list walks this tree and prints every slug it finds.

3. Wire skills into a personality​

A personality's toolset.yaml controls which installed skills it can call:

~/.ethos/personalities/researcher/toolset.yaml
tools:
  - search_web
  - read_file
  - steipete/slack          # clawhub slug

Switch personalities with /personality <id> in chat — only the listed skills will be invokable for that personality.

What's next​