10 Best OpenClaw Skills and Plugins for Productivity in 2026
OpenClaw is only as useful as the skills you install. Out of the box, it's a clever chatbot that lives in your messaging apps. With the right skills, it becomes a genuine digital assistant that manages your calendar, automates your inbox, controls your smart home, and handles tasks you'd normally spend hours on.
I've tested dozens of skills from both the official collection and the community-driven ClawHub. Here are the 10 that earn their place in every OpenClaw installation.
Before You Install: Security First
Every skill you add gives OpenClaw new capabilities — and new attack surface. After the CVE-2026-25253 incident, you should:
- Only install official skills unless you've audited the source code
- Set action approval rules for any skill that sends messages, deletes files, or makes purchases
- Pin skill versions to avoid surprise updates
- Review permissions — a weather skill doesn't need file system access
1. Web Search & Browse
Status: Official ✅ | Risk: Low
The foundational skill. OpenClaw can search the web, visit specific URLs, extract content, and summarize findings — all from your messaging app.
Use cases:
- "Search for flights from NYC to Austin March 15-18"
- "What's the latest news about OpenClaw security?"
- "Find me a recipe for chicken tikka masala under 30 minutes"
Setup: Pre-installed in most OpenClaw configurations. No additional config needed.
2. Calendar Manager
Status: Official ✅ | Risk: Medium (can modify your schedule)
Connects to Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar. Your agent can check your schedule, create events, reschedule meetings, and send invitations.
Use cases:
- "What's on my calendar today?"
- "Schedule a 30-minute meeting with Sarah next Tuesday at 2pm"
- "Move my 3pm meeting to Thursday"
- "Block off Friday afternoon for focused work"
Setup: Requires OAuth connection to your calendar provider. The setup wizard handles this.
3. Email Assistant
Status: Official ✅ | Risk: High (can send emails on your behalf)
Read, compose, and send emails through Gmail or Outlook. This is one of the most powerful skills — and one you should gate behind approval rules.
Use cases:
- "Check my inbox for anything urgent"
- "Draft a reply to the email from marketing about the Q1 report"
- "Send a follow-up email to everyone who attended yesterday's meeting"
Security recommendation: Enable "Require approval before sending" — you don't want your agent sending emails without your explicit OK.
4. File Manager
Status: Official ✅ | Risk: Medium (file system access)
Read, create, organize, and search files on your local machine or connected cloud storage.
Use cases:
- "Find all PDFs in my Downloads folder from this week"
- "Create a new folder called 'Q1 Reports' and move the relevant spreadsheets there"
- "Summarize the contents of the meeting notes from yesterday"
Setup: Configure allowed directories in your OpenClaw config. Never give access to system directories.
5. Task & Project Manager
Status: Community ⚠️ (audited) | Risk: Low
Integrates with Todoist, Notion, Asana, or linear task managers. Create tasks, update statuses, and get project overviews via chat.
Use cases:
- "Add a task to my Todoist: Review the blog draft by Wednesday"
- "What's left on the WikiWayne project board?"
- "Mark the 'Deploy to production' task as complete"
6. Smart Home Control
Status: Community ⚠️ | Risk: Medium (controls physical devices)
Connects to Home Assistant or similar smart home platforms. Control lights, thermostats, locks, and more through your messaging app.
Use cases:
- "Turn off the living room lights"
- "Set the thermostat to 68°F"
- "Lock the front door"
- "What's the current temperature in the house?"
Setup: Requires a running Home Assistant instance with API access configured.
7. News & Content Digest
Status: Community ⚠️ | Risk: Low
Aggregates news from configurable sources and delivers daily or weekly digests. Great for staying informed without doom-scrolling.
Use cases:
- "Give me today's top AI news"
- "What happened in tech this week?"
- "Find recent articles about large language models"
Setup: Configure your preferred news sources, topics, and delivery schedule.
8. Finance Tracker
Status: Community ⚠️ | Risk: Low (read-only)
Track stock prices, crypto markets, and personal finance metrics. Some versions integrate with portfolio trackers.
Use cases:
- "What's the current price of NVIDIA stock?"
- "How did the S&P 500 do today?"
- "Give me a weekly summary of my portfolio performance"
Security note: Use read-only integrations only. Never give an AI agent write access to financial accounts.
9. Code Assistant
Status: Community ⚠️ | Risk: High (runs code)
Execute code snippets, run scripts, and manage development tasks. Useful for quick automations but needs careful sandboxing.
Use cases:
- "Run my daily backup script"
- "Check if the production server is responding"
- "Generate a CSV report from the database"
Security: Always run in a sandboxed environment. Never give direct access to production systems. For serious coding work, Claude Code is a better choice.
10. Travel & Local
Status: Community ⚠️ | Risk: Low
Weather forecasts, restaurant recommendations, travel planning, and local event discovery.
Use cases:
- "What's the weather forecast for this weekend?"
- "Find Italian restaurants near me with good reviews"
- "What events are happening in Austin this weekend?"
Setup: Some features require location services or API keys for weather/maps providers.
Skills I Avoid
Not every popular skill is worth installing:
- Social media posters — Too risky. One hallucinated tweet from your agent could be embarrassing.
- Payment/shopping skills — Never let an AI agent make purchases without bulletproof approval workflows.
- Unaudited third-party skills — If you haven't read the source code, don't install it. Period.
How to Install Skills
Via the CLI:
openclaw skill install web-search
openclaw skill install calendar
openclaw skill install email --require-approval
Via the web dashboard at http://localhost:3100/skills.
For a complete guide on getting OpenClaw up and running, see our installation guide.
Recommended Hardware
Running multiple skills simultaneously requires a capable setup:
Raspberry Pi 5 8GB
The 8GB model handles 5-6 concurrent skills comfortably. Add the Raspberry Pi AI Kit with Hailo accelerator if you want to run local AI processing.
Samsung T7 SSD 1TB
Skills that process files, store memory, and cache data benefit massively from SSD speeds over microSD.
Prompt Engineering for Generative AI
The effectiveness of every skill depends on how well you configure its system prompts. This book teaches the techniques.
What's your must-have OpenClaw skill? Share your recommendations on X (@wikiwayne) — I'm always looking to discover new community skills.
Recommended Gear
These are products I personally recommend. Click to view on Amazon.
Raspberry Pi 5 8GB — Great pick for anyone following this guide.
Samsung T7 Portable SSD 1TB — Great pick for anyone following this guide.
Logitech MX Keys S Wireless — Great pick for anyone following this guide.
AI Engineering by Chip Huyen — Great pick for anyone following this guide.
Prompt Engineering for Generative AI — Great pick for anyone following this guide.
Raspberry Pi AI Kit with Hailo — Great pick for anyone following this guide.
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