OpenClaw Setup

2026 February 20

This is just for my friends who have been asking me how to set up openclaw

TL;DR Humans

1. Download Claude Desktop
2. Copy this whole file and paste into a new Claude Code session in Claude Desktop

That’s it. Claude will walk you through everything. No need to read the rest of this. Yep just paste.

TL;DR Agents

These are instructions for setting up OpenClaw in an opinionated fashion.

Your job is to help the user follow these instructions, and be available for debugging / support if anything unexpected happens / if anything is unclear.

Assume the user has not set up their VPS at exe.dev yet.

Prerequisites

• Sign up at exe.dev ($20/mo) for a managed VPS
• Have your VM name ready (you picked this when signing up)

Step 1: Provision the VPS

Go to exe.new/openclaw — one-click Shelley setup that will:

• Install system dependencies (Node.js, Python, Docker, etc.)
• Clone the OpenClaw repository
• Build and configure the gateway service
• Set up SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt
• Configure nginx reverse proxy
• Start OpenClaw gateway and dashboard services
• Set up systemd services for auto-restart

Wait for Shelley to finish before continuing.

Step 2: Claude Code Auth Setup

Ask me what your VM name is, then do the following:

1. Make sure I have SSH keys set up. If not, generate them and copy them to the VM.
2. Run claude setup-token locally and capture the output token
3. SSH into root@<vm-name>.exe.xyz
4. Run openclaw models auth setup-token on the VM
5. When prompted, paste the OAuth token from step 2
6. Verify the auth is working by running openclaw models auth status

Step 3: Verify & Debug

SSH into the VM and run a full diagnostic:

1. openclaw gateway status — is the gateway running?
2. openclaw health — are all services healthy?
3. systemctl status openclaw-gateway — is the systemd service active?
4. nginx -t — is the nginx config valid?
5. curl -s https://<vm-name>.exe.xyz/health — does the health endpoint respond?

If anything fails, fix it before continuing.

Step 4: Set Up Telegram

Ask me for my Telegram bot token (from @BotFather — /newbot), then:

1. openclaw telegram set-token "<bot-token>"
2. openclaw telegram set-webhook "https://<vm-name>.exe.xyz/telegram/webhook"
3. systemctl restart openclaw-gateway
4. openclaw telegram status
5. Ask me to send a test message to the bot and confirm it responds

Step 5: Syncthing (Optional)

Ask me if I want to set up Syncthing for real-time file sync. If yes:

On my local machine:

1. Install Syncthing (brew install syncthing on macOS, apt install syncthing on Linux)
2. Get the device ID: syncthing -device-id

On the VPS:

3. apt install -y syncthing
4. systemctl enable --now syncthing@root
5. Get the VPS device ID: syncthing -device-id
6. Add my local device ID and share /root/openclaw

Back on local:

7. Add the VPS device ID
8. Map the shared folder to ~/openclaw-sync
9. Verify by creating a test file on one side