#skill dpendencies to install

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fallen bolt
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I just got my first clawdbot set up what skill dependencies should i enable and which ones should i not enable if i dont want a lot of tokens used

pine birchBOT
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karmic crestBOT
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Enabling/installing skill dependencies (brew/uv/go/ffmpeg/etc.) doesn’t burn tokens by itself — tokens are only used when the agent calls a model. What can increase token use is having lots of eligible skills and tools injected into the system prompt each turn, and then doing tool-heavy stuff (web fetch, browser automation, big outputs).

How much do “extra skills” cost?

OpenClaw injects a compact skills list into the system prompt. The overhead is roughly:

  • ~97 characters per skill (+ name/description/location lengths) ≈ ~24 tokens per skill on “OpenAI-ish” tokenizers.
    Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/skills (see “Token impact (skills list)”)

So: 30 extra skills is maybe ~700 tokens/turn. Not nothing, but usually the real token killers are web pages, browser snapshots, big logs, long chat history, etc.

Practical “low token” setup (recommended)

  1. Keep the eligible skill set small
  • If you want to be strict, use an allowlist for bundled skills:
  • And/or explicitly disable skills you don’t want:
    • skills.entries.<skill>.enabled: false
  1. Restrict tools (this matters more than people expect)
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If you don’t want the agent doing expensive “fetch a bunch of text and summarize it” workflows, restrict tools globally:

  • Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools (tool profiles + allow/deny)
  • Good cheap defaults:
    • tools.profile: "minimal" (basically no tools)
    • or tools.profile: "messaging" (if you mainly want chat + sending messages)
  • Consider denying the usual high-token culprits:
    • group:web (web_search/web_fetch)
    • group:ui (browser/canvas)
  1. Control heartbeat
    Heartbeat is useful, but it does run periodic model turns.
  • If you want minimum spend: set agents.defaults.heartbeat.every to a larger interval or 0m to disable.
  • Or set heartbeat to a cheaper model than your main chat model (pick one you already have configured).
    Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/heartbeat
    (If you want “which cheap model?”, ask in #models — model landscape changes fast.)

How to measure what’s costing you tokens

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If you tell me what you want your clawdbot to actually do (just chat? reminders? coding? web research?), I can suggest a “minimal-but-useful” skills + tools set for that.

fallen bolt
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what does clawhub do

karmic crestBOT
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ClawHub is basically the skills registry + package manager for OpenClaw skills.

What it does:

  • Discover skills (browse): https://clawhub.com
  • Install skills into your OpenClaw workspace (so the agent can use them)
    • clawhub install <skill-slug>
  • Update skills you installed
    • clawhub update --all
  • Sync / back up your installed skills (scan what you have + publish updates, depending on your setup)
    • clawhub sync --all

Where it installs:

  • By default it installs into ./skills under whatever folder you run it from (your workspace). OpenClaw loads skills from your workspace skills/ automatically on the next session.
    Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/skills

Two important notes:

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  • ClawHub itself doesn’t “use tokens” — but installing a ton of skills can slightly increase per-message overhead because the eligible skills list gets injected into the system prompt.
  • Third‑party skills are effectively untrusted code/instructions, so it’s worth opening the skill folder and reading the SKILL.md before enabling/using it.
fallen bolt
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what does oracle skill do

karmic crestBOT
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The oracle skill just teaches Clawdbot how to use the oracle CLI (npm package @steipete/oracle).

What it’s for:

  • Bundle a prompt + a selected set of files and send it as a one-shot to another model so it can answer with real repo context.
  • Can run via:
    • Browser engine (typical “long think” flow in ChatGPT)
    • API engine (if you want to use your API keys)

Why people use it:

  • Deep codebase Q&A / “what’s going on here?” investigations
  • “Make a plan / propose a patch” with relevant files attached
  • Session support (reattach instead of re-running)

Token/cost note:

  • It can get expensive fast if you attach a lot of files (because you’re literally sending the file contents).
  • The golden trick is to keep the file set tight and use --dry-run --files-report to preview payload/token spend before actually running.