How to open OpenClaw in the terminal

OpenClaw is a command-line program first, and the question people type into search, how to open it in the terminal, has a short answer and a useful one. The short answer is the word openclaw. The useful one is what each of the commands you will actually use does, in the order you meet them, taken from the docs’ own CLI reference.

The first five

• openclaw: the terminal UI connected to the Gateway. You can also hand it a Control UI session URL and it opens that session.
• openclaw onboard: verifies inference first, then sets up the Gateway, workspace, channels and skills; the classic flag opens the step-by-step wizard.
• openclaw gateway: runs the Gateway in this terminal; gateway install, start, stop and status manage it as a service.
• openclaw dashboard: opens the Control UI in your browser with a one-time pairing link; a flag prints the URL instead of launching a browser.
• openclaw status: diagnostics for channels and sessions; the all flag gives a pasteable full diagnosis, and doctor checks the configuration.

Two things the reference makes explicit. Setup commands are split by intent: onboard and setup verify inference before anything else, configure changes one part of an existing setup, and channels add configures a channel once the baseline exists. And the CLI and the background Gateway service are separate: a prompt to install the service does not mean the CLI is missing.

The OpenClaw CLI and the background Gateway service are separate.

When it is quiet or wrong

• openclaw triage: read-only checks, a sanitised diagnosis, and an offer to hand it to a coding agent on your machine.
• openclaw channels status with the probe flag, then openclaw logs with follow.
• openclaw doctor, with the fix flag to migrate retired settings after an upgrade.

The one-command try

Nothing installed yet? Running the latest openclaw through npx starts the guided onboarding without a global install, reuses an existing Claude Code or Codex login or an API key, and leaves the Gateway running in that terminal until you press Ctrl+C. OpenClaw setup, step by step is what to do after it.

If openclaw is not found

The install put the binary on a path your shell has not reloaded yet, or into a prefix that is not on the path at all; the docs’ install page ends with that exact case. How to install OpenClaw covers the methods and which prefix each one uses.

On Diali

On Diali there is no terminal to open for OpenClaw itself, unless you add the Web Terminal, a browser terminal into the assistant’s workspace: the Gateway runs on the instance and the dashboard is the control surface, with the activity feed and the restart and update buttons where the commands would be. The assistant, on the other hand, has a real command line inside its sandbox with more than 250 preinstalled tools, which CLI tools on Diali lists. Hosted OpenClaw on Diali is the assistant.

• Type openclaw; the rest are subcommands.
• Onboard verifies inference before it configures anything.
• Status, triage, logs, doctor, in that order, when it goes quiet.