00:00:00Ever since OpenClaw got released, many people have started using it as an all-rounder personal assistant, letting it run their entire personal and professional life, but how can it fit into a developer's workflow?
00:00:11As a developer, there are a lot of tasks that need constant monitoring and controlling. It gets tedious, and even a missed oversight could lead to huge disasters.
00:00:19So, our team pushed OpenClaw to see how many developer tasks it could actually handle for us. We set it up on one of our Mac Minis, built different workflows around it, and let it run for weeks.
00:00:29Now OpenClaw's creator did join OpenAI, but that shouldn't matter because not much has changed for the project itself, and after weeks of testing, we're starting to understand why OpenAI wanted the person who built this.
00:00:40If we have hosted our websites on Vercel or any other hosting platform, we can also monitor it with OpenClaw and let it report and fix the dependencies on its own without needing our input.
00:00:50With React apps, there are cases when the dependencies get upgraded because their libraries often get vulnerabilities, meaning upgrading to the latest patch is critical for ensuring app security like we saw with the React server vulnerability a few months back.
00:01:02So in such cases, we used to manually update the dependencies and push the fix to the source control we were using. I let OpenClaw manage this as well.
00:01:10We created a dependency maintenance cron job that frequently checks the repo code and the dependencies. It followed the guidelines we had provided for managing the dependencies and reported back on the Discord channel with updates.
00:01:22So with this in place, we had it run every 12 hours, and once it ran, we got updates on Discord that there were new dependency issues and that it tested a safe lock file refresh, which means it updated dependencies to the latest stable versions without breaking changes.
00:01:35It also reported the things that needed our attention, which in our case were the baseline quality checks like linting and testing, which needed our input to fix so that it can push the patch on GitHub.
00:01:45Once the execution completed, it upgraded the dependencies and updated to the latest version on the platform.
00:01:50Since our team has a YouTube channel, we actually have a Discord server where we all talk about different ideas.
00:01:56For a channel like ours, our team needs to be up to date at all times with the latest releases in order to test things out properly from different angles.
00:02:04Our team was already using Mac Minis inside our setup on which we were testing and developing stuff, so one of us suggested we should use one for the OpenClaw, letting it act like a server within our setup.
00:02:14We used one of them to set up OpenClaw and created a cron job that researches through our sources for ideas and compiles research targeted towards the tools we usually use in our workflow.
00:02:23It also provided video angles and explained how to use each idea.
00:02:27So with this setup, our team starts our days with a detailed research report in our dedicated text channel.
00:02:32This way we can do our daily briefing on the tech news, what the latest releases were, what the big changes were, and all of the resources clearly organized with different video angles that we can benefit from.
00:02:42It also provided the source links for each piece of news so that we can dig deeper on each item.
00:02:47And this was just one angle of research that we can do with OpenClaw, but this idea can be extended much further than this to research tools, competitors, and much more.
00:02:55When working with cloud providers like Google, AWS, and others, it often happens that we get higher bills than expected because of an incorrect configuration of a VM or any misconfigured load.
00:03:06And we only get to know the bill when we get the invoice, unless we monitor it manually using the CloudWatch consoles of the respective platform.
00:03:13But with OpenClaw's abilities, it's possible to automate that as well.
00:03:16So our team created a skill for an API cost watchdog, which checks the budget using the CLI tools of the cloud provider we were using for our project.
00:03:24We had it placed inside the skills folder in the .openclaw folder, and the skill was recognized on the dashboard.
00:03:30We created a cron job using OpenClaw's chat interface and tasked it to monitor our API keys and the cloud consoles.
00:03:37We asked it to report back any anomaly on the channels we had configured for it, which were WhatsApp and Discord.
00:03:42Using this, we were able to get a message alert on our Discord that the resource usage had spiked in the past 60 minutes and had almost doubled because a certain service had a burst of retries.
00:03:52It also gave actionable steps on what we can do right now to prevent the spike.
00:03:56This setup gave timely reports, preventing the bills from climbing further.
00:03:59Now this skill, along with other resources, can be found in AI Labs Pro.
00:04:03For those who don't know, it's our recently launched community where you get ready-to-use templates that you can plug directly into your projects, for this video and all previous ones.
00:04:12If you've found value in what we do and want to support the channel, this is the best way to do it. The link's in the description.
00:04:18We can also use OpenClaw for monitoring any hosted app.
00:04:22We had an application that we had already hosted on Vercel, but we needed to ensure the security of the application and make sure there was nothing wrong on the server's end that could be harmful to our app.
00:04:31For that, we set up a heartbeat system that performs frequent health checks.
00:04:35When we provided it with the domain of our app, it automatically ran frequent checks to monitor the website's uptime and security issues.
00:04:42It also scanned the website server logs using the credentials we had set up for Vercel and checked for cross-site scripting and SQL injection, ensuring that the application remained secure.
00:04:51This way it sent us updates on the configured channel on Discord, where it gave us the overall health check of our application in terms of security, uptime and average response time as well.
00:05:01It also provided some actionable security hardening steps that would make the application run properly, such as adding security headers.
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00:06:08Aside from hosted app monitoring, you can also monitor the application for SEO performance, which is important to make your site visible across search engines.
00:06:16So for that, we actually created another heartbeat check to monitor the hosted application for SEO, where it periodically ran multiple checks on the app and ensured that the app is indexable, contained all the required items for a website, and that robots.txt and the sitemap are reachable.
00:06:31Once it ran, it sent a full report on how our application was performing so far in the context of SEO and reported all the findings.
00:06:39It also gave the fixes that we need to implement in our app to make the site more visible and rank higher in search results, such as fixing the route to sitemap, adding in meta description, and adding proper tags.
00:06:49The thing about OpenClaw that stands out is its ability to run on its own for long-term tasks and execute them independently without needing much supervision.
00:06:58This makes building with OpenClaw easier because it handles testing and bug fixing without explicit input from us, which makes shipping end-to-end smoother.
00:07:06In addition, we can also connect multiple models to OpenClaw and create multiple agents set up using the models most suitable for each task.
00:07:13So this is the exact reason people have been building and shipping products by letting OpenClaw coordinate and handle everything on its own.
00:07:20We gave the PRD for the app we had planned to build as an instruction to OpenClaw in chat and asked it to create the app.
00:07:26Once it set off, it first needed approval in OpenClaw for running the tools. And once approved, without needing any input from our side, it just built the app, pushed the repo to GitHub, deployed it on Vercel, and gave us the links.
00:07:38We also got a summary of its working in the chat.
00:07:40This website was built with the combined power of Codex and the Gemini 3 model using the best capabilities of each model as needed and matched the requirements in the PRD exactly.
00:07:50Also, if you are enjoying our content, consider pressing the hype button because it helps us create more content like this and reach out to more people.
00:07:57Clawed Code is a strong coding agent, but the one area where Gemini has an edge over it is in image generation capabilities.
00:08:04OpenClaw can be used to bridge the gap between the two, letting us use the power of both combined.
00:08:09Now we previously created a skill for using Google's nano banana image generation abilities, where we talked about another workflow in which you can get free image generation with Clawed Code.
00:08:19You can check out that video on the channel.
00:08:21But OpenClaw also comes bundled with a similar skill called Nano Banana Pro as well, which just needs an API key to enable it.
00:08:27We tested the native skill as well and saw how well it compared to ours.
00:08:31Once the skill was enabled, we used the OpenClaw, provided it the directory path of where the app should be, and asked it to use Clawed Code to implement the website,
00:08:39used the Nano Banana Pro skill to create images that fit into the application, and placed them in the public directory so that Clawed can access the images and use them on the landing page.
00:08:48Once it got the approval to proceed, it started the implementation of the application.
00:08:52It broke down the large task into subtasks instead of giving a large prompt to Clawed and implemented them step by step, giving us updates on the progress of the implementation and continuously committing to Git as well.
00:09:03In the meantime, it also generated the images that fit with the application.
00:09:07One thing to do before using Clawed Code via OpenClaw is to either preset the permissions that would be needed to create an application, like we did in the settings.json inside the .clawed folder, or ask OpenClaw to run using the dangerously skipped permissions flag.
00:09:21This is because OpenClaw tends to get stuck when Clawed Code asks for permissions before implementing anything, and OpenClaw has no means of allowing the permission on its own, causing the session to end in a timeout.
00:09:32This way, the whole website was created just by coordinating Nano Banana and Clawed Code together, generating images that fit directly into the website flow, and allowing us to use both of these tools together.
00:09:43If you're working with a lot of people and you send cold emails to sell your product, you can use OpenClaw to automate this as well.
00:09:49OpenClaw handled the research of leads and possible clients.
00:09:52We were looking for some potential developers who were working on LLM applications so that we could reach out to them and get their reviews on our product.
00:10:00The best place to look for such developers is GitHub, so we gave it instructions to scrape the GitHub trending page and get all the top ranking users who are working in the same area and have their email and contact information public.
00:10:11We set this up as a cron job and scheduled it to run at 9am every morning.
00:10:15This way, when we begin our day, we return to email drafts already prepared in our account.
00:10:20OpenClaw saved all the potential clients to a folder in the Documents folder and created draft emails only instead of actually sending them, because it needed our cross-checking before sending to the people on the list.
00:10:31These drafts were solid and were exactly built the way we instructed.
00:10:34We gave access to our Google account via the GOG CLI, which comes bundled with the OpenClaw installation.
00:10:40We just needed to enable the required APIs from the cloud console and add the credentials from there.
00:10:45Once configured, it was able to access our Gmail and when the cron job ran, it created three draft emails including the style we had specified in detail when setting up the cron job via the OpenClaw chat like emails should be casual and conversational and contain a soft CTA.
00:10:59This way, we were able to reach out to multiple people through cold emailing to expand our reach.
00:11:04And since OpenClaw runs on its own all the time as long as the device is on, it works well as a personal assistant.
00:11:10This is because we can configure it with multiple tools like we did by connecting it to the Google Workspace CLI for all Google products.
00:11:18You can also connect it with many other platforms because it comes built in with multiple skills such as Apple Reminders, Gemini, GitHub and many more, most of which are already pre-configured.
00:11:28You just need to enable them or provide the API key for them to work.
00:11:32With this setup, we've actually been using it as our personal assistant.
00:11:35We set up a heartbeat that scans important emails on every cycle.
00:11:39We did this because a lot of emails from newsletters often cause important emails to get missed when your inbox is crowded.
00:11:45This heartbeat instructs OpenClaw to prioritize emails marked as important and ignore promotional emails and newsletters.
00:11:51It scores emails based on the criteria defined in the cron job, identifies actionable items from each and updates them on the configured channels, be it WhatsApp or Discord.
00:12:00So when we check, we only get email updates from Google Workspace for the items that actually need our attention.
00:12:06We can even ask OpenClaw questions related to calendar events or schedule tasks directly from chat messages.
00:12:12There are often times when we had to use Clawed code, but we were away from our devices.
00:12:16It used to be frustrating because we were unable to access what we had in Clawed code and had no way of accessing it remotely.
00:12:22With OpenClaw, this gap also got bridged because now we just tell our OpenClaw setup to go to the directory where we have what we need and run Clawed code to do whatever we want.
00:12:31As we mentioned earlier, OpenClaw is unable to interact with Clawed's permission prompts on its own and get stuck indefinitely,
00:12:37so we either pre-allow the permissions we know will be required, like create, write, and edit in the .clawed settings, or explicitly ask it to run with the dangerously skipped permissions flag.
00:12:47Once that's in place, we asked Clawed code to run a research in a directory we use to manage our research tasks and return the complete summary to us.
00:12:55This opened up opportunities for pushing changes in the codebase, reviewing PRs, and fixing production errors, all from our chat applications even when we are on the go.
00:13:03Now these were the different ways you can use OpenClaw, but in order to use it effectively, there are certain things you need to be careful of before installing this in the first place.
00:13:11We talked about this in detail in our previous video on this tool. You might end up seeing that video on the end screen, so you can just click on it instead of looking it up.
00:13:18That brings us to the end of this video. If you'd like to support the channel and help us keep making videos like this, you can do so by using the super thanks button below.
00:13:26As always, thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.