Install in 60 seconds.

1. Install the CLI

Pick your package manager.

npm install -g openclaw@latest

pnpm add -g openclaw@latest

bun add -g openclaw@latest

2. Onboard

The onboarding wizard installs the daemon as a user service (systemd on Linux, launchd on macOS), provisions the data directory, generates the admin key, and creates your first tenant.

openclaw onboard --install-daemon

The wizard asks for:

• Your default LLM provider (Anthropic / OpenAI / custom)
• The API key for that provider (stored in the gateway config, never in tenant overlays)
• The first tenant's name
• Optional S3 backup destination

3. Create another tenant

Once the gateway is running, provision more tenants one at a time or in bulk via the control-plane API.

openclaw tenants create globex
openclaw tenants create initech --quota.tokens-per-day 2_000_000

4. Pair a channel

Pair each tenant to one or more messaging channels. The CLI walks the channel-specific flow.

# WhatsApp (scan QR with your phone)
openclaw channels pair whatsapp --tenant acme

# Telegram (paste BotFather token)
openclaw channels pair telegram --tenant acme --token 1234567:ABCdefGHI...

# Slack (opens OAuth in your browser)
openclaw channels pair slack --tenant acme

# Discord (paste bot token)
openclaw channels pair discord --tenant acme --token <bot-token>

5. Verify

# is the gateway up?
openclaw status

# what tenants exist?
openclaw tenants list

# tail the audit log
openclaw audit tail

Alternative: Docker

For containerized deployments, run the official Docker image. Mount a host volume for tenant data so you can survive container restarts.

docker run -d --name openclawmu \
  -p 18789:18789 \
  -v ~/.openclaw:/data \
  -e OPENCLAW_DATA_DIR=/data \
  -e ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  neullabs/openclawmu:latest

Alternative: docker compose

services:
  openclawmu:
    image: neullabs/openclawmu:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:18789:18789"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
    environment:
      OPENCLAW_DATA_DIR: /data
      ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}
      OPENCLAWMU_ADMIN_KEY: ${OPENCLAWMU_ADMIN_KEY}

Exposing the gateway

The gateway binds 127.0.0.1:18789 by default. To accept inbound channel webhooks (Slack, Telegram, etc.) from the public internet, front it with one of:

• Tailscale Funnel — easiest, single command, free for personal use.
• Cloudflare Tunnel — also single-command; nice if you're already on Cloudflare.
• nginx / Caddy — classic reverse-proxy with your own TLS cert.
• SSH tunnel — fine for dev and small ops.

tailscale funnel 18789
# → https://<your-machine>.<tailnet>.ts.net is now public