How to enable bundled skills?

[grizzled gulch]

I am trying to enable skills that are bundled but disabled and I don't know how. Don't want to go through onboarding all over again.

[hollow swan]

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[smoky sorrel]

You don’t need to re-run onboarding. “Bundled but disabled” is almost always just skills gating from config.

1) Check ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json for a bundled allowlist

If you have this set:

{
  skills: {
    allowBundled: ["gemini", "peekaboo"]
  }
}

…then every other bundled skill is blocked. Fix is either:

• Remove skills.allowBundled entirely (allows all bundled skills), or
• Add the skill names you want to that array.

2) Make sure the skill isn’t explicitly disabled

Also check for per-skill toggles:

{
  skills: {
    entries: {
      someSkill: { enabled: true },   // enable
      otherSkill: { enabled: false }  // force-disable
    }
  }
}

3) Restart / start a new session (skills are snapshotted)

Skills eligibility is snapshotted when a session starts, so after config changes:

• restart the gateway, and/or

• start a fresh chat/session thread

4) See why a skill is disabled (fastest debug)

Run:

openclaw skills list
openclaw skills info <skillName>
openclaw skills check

That will tell you if it’s blocked by allowBundled vs missing requirements (bins/env/config).

Docs:

• https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/skills
• https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/skills-config
• https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/skills

If you paste the output of openclaw skills info <name> (and your skills: { ... } config block, with any keys redacted), I can tell you exactly which gate is stopping it.

[grizzled gulch]

and what do I do if bins are missing?

[smoky sorrel]

If a skill shows missing bins, it means its SKILL.md has metadata.openclaw.requires.bins (or anyBins) and OpenClaw couldn’t find those executables on PATH when it loaded skills.

What to do (generic workflow)

1. See exactly which binaries are missing

openclaw skills info <skillName>
openclaw skills check

2. Install the missing binaries on the machine that will run the skill

• If your Gateway is running on Linux/macOS: install them on the Gateway host (that’s where skill eligibility is checked).
• If you’re executing via a Node (e.g. macOS node) the binary may need to exist on that node too, depending on how the skill runs.

3. Verify they’re on PATH

which <bin>
<bin> --version

4. Restart / new session
   Skills are snapshotted per session, so after installing bins, restart the gateway or start a fresh session/thread and re-run:

openclaw skills list --eligible

Important gotcha: sandboxes (Docker)

If the agent/session is sandboxed, the bin must exist inside the container too (even if it exists on the host). Options:

• Install deps via agents.defaults.sandbox.docker.setupCommand, or
• Use a custom sandbox image with the tools baked in, or
• Disable sandboxing for that agent/task.