Quickstart

You have the binary. This page takes you from zero config to a working agent and a long-running runtime in about five minutes.

1. Onboard#

The fastest path is one command with a provider key:

nullclaw onboard --api-key sk-... --provider openrouter

Prefer to be walked through it? The interactive wizard covers providers, channels, memory and more:

nullclaw onboard --interactive

You can also set provider, model and memory backend in one go:

nullclaw onboard --api-key ... --provider ... --model ... --memory ...

Either way, onboarding writes a single JSON config to ~/.nullclaw/config.json. That file is the whole recipe — see Configuration for what's in it.

2. Say hello#

Send a single message:

nullclaw agent -m "Hello, nullclaw!"

Or start an interactive chat:

nullclaw agent

Inside the interactive session, /model shows the current model and routing status, and /config reload hot-reloads supported keys from config.json without a restart.

3. Start the runtime#

gateway is the long-running mode: it starts the HTTP gateway, all configured channels, the heartbeat, and the cron scheduler in one process.

nullclaw gateway                # default: 127.0.0.1:3000
nullclaw gateway --port 8080    # custom port

Confirm it is up:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/health

The gateway binds to loopback by default and refuses a public bind without a tunnel or an explicit override — see Security before exposing anything.

4. Check the runtime#

Two commands cover most "is it working?" questions:

nullclaw status   # full system status
nullclaw doctor   # diagnostics with exact error details

If something misbehaves, nullclaw agent --verbose shows what a foreground run is doing.

Coming from OpenClaw?#

NullClaw uses the same config structure as OpenClaw, and there is a one-command migration for config and memory:

nullclaw migrate openclaw --dry-run   # preview first
nullclaw migrate openclaw             # then do it

Where things live#

Next#

Wire up Telegram or another messenger in Your first channel, or jump straight to Providers to tune models and routing.