Master OpenClaw in 30 Minutes (5 Real Use Cases + Setup + Memory)

Hey everyone. So, a weekend and I think OpenClaw is generally the best personal AI assistant that I've ever used. It truly feels like talking to a trusted friend who can actually get stuff done for me. But this is still really early software. So, I want to do a deep dive on how to set it up safely, my actual use cases for calendar, docs, personal briefings, and voice chat. how to link it to Google Workspace, which I run my life on, and finally, how to make it truly personal and useful by getting a peak into how it actually works and how it actually manages memory. All right, so here's a quick screenshot of my bot, which I've called Zoe, introducing herself. Let's dive into it. So, first things first, let's recap how to set up Open Claw safely so that you don't get

compromised. Number one, run it on a dedicated computer. I installed it on a Mac Mini, but any old MacBook would do. You have to keep it running 24/7, though, so that it stays on, and you can do that using a free Mac app that I'll link in the description. Number two, sign up with its own credentials. My Open Claw uses his own Apple and Gmail ID. it does not have access to my main Gmail account other than the files that I've shared with it. Number three, run open clause security audit. So in terminal, all you got to do is type this command that I'm showing here, claudebot security audit-deep, and it'll run through the steps and make it more secure. And number four, give it read access to your account and write access to select files. So, for example, it can read my personal calendar and edit select Google Docs and Sheets that I've shared with it, but it doesn't have access to my entire Google Drive. And last, but not least, never share your bot with anyone else. Don't add it to group chats or any websites. You know, this last one is super important. Here's a tweet from an OpenClaw contributor on how MoBebook, someone's vibecoded app, started leaking confidential stuff to the public. Now, if you want to make your bot truly personal, you'll inevitably share some personal information with it. So, I personally would never share my bot with others, whether it's a group chat or putting on a public website. My bot can only talk to me and me alone. Okay? And I highly encourage you to do the same thing. Okay, now let's get to the fun part. I'm going to demo five tasks that I've dedicated to my bot right now. Managing calendar, editing documents, talking to it using voice, getting daily briefings, and weekly insight reports. And I'm actually recording this from the Mac Mini that my bot Zoe is on. So, let me show you my chat with her right now.

Okay. So now let's actually walk through the very first use case which is using Zoey to manage my calendar. So here is the Google calendar for Zoe. But what I've done is I've shared my personal calendar from my main account with her. So what she can do is she can just send me calendar invites, right? I can just text her and she'll make something happen. So let's do a demonstration. Uh, let's say today is Sunday and I'm thinking of going to the city with my family. Can you look up cow train schedules this morning around 10:00 a. m.? Okay, so Zoe has access to browsing the web, right? So, we can search the web and look up calrain schedules and let's see what it responds with. Okay. So, you see here that uh Zoe has pulled up some couch schedules. 9:44, 10:14, 10:44. And u you know, my kids wake up pretty late. So, let's aim for the 10:14 a. m. Cal Train arriving the city and walking to the fair building, right? Send me a calendar invite for 10:14 a. m. Cal Train to the city. And let's say it should be 3 hours. Call it family trip to the ferry building. All right. So again, Zoe has access to read my calendar and it can also send invite to my main Gmail. And let's see if she can actually do it or not. Okay, so it said it's done. And lo and behold, today on Sunday, there is a calendar invite for a family trip to the ferry building, right? And the way that this works is that, you know, this is Zoe's calendar, but she added me as an attendee to this calendar invite and I can accept or decline the invite. Now, this is not as powerful and robust as just giving OpenCloud access to your main calendar, but I think this is a safe way to do it. So, just imagine I'm on a go and I want to quickly schedule something. It's just way easier to text a Zoey like this than to actually go into Google calendar and create an event and do all that crap. Okay, so this is the first use case. This is a very simple use case. And to make this work, all you got to do is make sure Zoe has her own Gmail and Google calendar and share your Google calendar with her as read only or view only access and then she can send you or you can send yourself using her calendar invites anytime that you want. Okay, now let's go back to uh our use

cases and let's go to edit documents. So I've created a file called Peter-ZE. It's a blank document and basically what I've done is I've shared it with Zoe's email. So Zoe actually has edit access to this file. All right. So let's just say um I've created a doc called Peter Zoey. [snorts] Why don't you putting a plan for our trip in that dock including Cal Train ferry building visit and lunch after. Okay. So if Zoe is uh smart, it should recognize that this doc exists and it should be able to add this interesting content to that document. Okay. So that took maybe like two minutes I would say. And now let's take a look at this document. Right. So Zoe has added a family trip for us. Here we go. We're going to leave from Burning Game Station 10:14, arrive in the city, and then we are going to go to the ferry building. Going to walk around. Here are some lunch options that Zoe found for us. I really love Hog Island Oyster Company, although it's pretty crowded. And then we're going to come back. Uh, and it's even included some tips for us. So there you go. So, as you can see, I've set up Zoe so that she can edit Google Docs for me, which is a massive timesaver, right? For me to actually use chat GP instead and try to copy paste this stuff into a Google doc while on the go, it's just a lot more work. Before we move on from this use case, I want to show you how Zoe can also edit Google spreadsheets. So, here I have my content calendar for upcoming blog posts and I'm going to publish a tutorial on 24. Okay. So, let's add Zoe. Now, I want you to add the title. Uh, let's say Cloudbot. No, it's not called Cloud anymore. It's called uh OpenCloud. Master OpenC Cloud in 20 minutes. Five actual use cases. So, here's the title to my content schedule. And just to make it easy, let's link it and um let's say add it next to 24. Okay, so this is maybe a little bit more complicated than a document because it's actually a spreadsheet, right? And let's see if Zoe can do this as well. All right, so there you go. Zoe has added master open claw in 20 minutes next to the exact cell that I want. And uh yeah, now I can update my content schedule just by texting my assistant on the go. Just super convenient. You know, one day maybe Google will build this feature natively, but for now, Zoe and Open Claw is my best option. All right. Now, let's

go back to our five tasks. And this is a fun one. Just be able to talk to it using voice, right? So, how do you do this? Just like with anything else, the first thing I like to do is just ask Zoe, what are some options? So, I've already set up voice here with Zoe. So, let's say pretend you don't have a voice yet and we're setting this up from scratch. What are some options that we can explore? Okay, just like with anything else, you just have to ask uh Zoe or your open cloud bot to explore some options. One thing I found with this bot is that unlike other AI products, it can usually do what you want it to do. So, it's just really fun. All right, so Zoe came back with a few different options. So, there's free options. EdTS, which is Microsoft's voices. There are paid options like 11 Labs, Open Labs. TTS is actually what is TTS? Let's just ask what is TTS? You know, I really don't like acronyms. So, what is TTS? All right. So, TTS is text to speech. Okay. Got it. Because, you know, I'm cheap and uh I don't want to pay money, let's just use Microsoft's voices, right? So, let's say, tell me more about EdgeTS options. Okay. And let's see if it works. All right. So, Ed HTTS uses Microsoft's newer voices. It's free. There's actually 300 voices. anything from Jenny to Guy Sonia and so on. And how it works is you configuring your gateway and so on so forth. But we're just going to get Open Claw and Zoe to do it for us, right? So, you know, because I already did this, let's just say, send me a voice note by telling me a funny dad joke. Okay. And let's see if Zoe can do it. Okay. It seems to have sent this through text. So, let's specify that we actually want it through voice. Okay. So, there we go. It sent me a voice note. And I'm actually not sure if you guys can hear the voice note, but I'm gonna try to play it anyway. Okay, so if you guys couldn't hear that, the joke was, "Why don't scientists trust atoms? " Because they make up everything. It's a pretty lame joke, but I guess I asked it for that joke, but you can imagine, you know, how powerful this use case is, right? Like I can get it to send me greetings. summarize some document using voice. And I can chat back and forth with it. me using Whisper Flow and it replying through voice notes. Okay. And to set this up again, you just have to ask Zoe to set up HTTS. Like that's literally what I did. Just set up HTTS and it will do the whole thing for you. All right. Now

let's go back to our list and let's talk about our last two use cases. Sending daily briefings and sending weekly reports. These are some of the most powerful use cases that I found with Zoey and OpenCloud. And the way this stuff works is it just uses chron jobs, right? Chron jobs are basically schedule tasks that the AI runs, pulling together a bunch of information APIs to give you a good report. So, it's not super fancy, but the fact that I can just set up these chron jobs just by texting my AI is so much easier than having to configure some dashboard or anything else. Okay. So, now let's ask Zoe to give me my daily briefing. Uh, avoid sharing any super sensitive info because I'm recording a tutorial. Share it here in chat. All right. And now if uh it works, Zoe is going to send me a briefing with weather, upcoming counter events, trending AI discussions, and a personal thought based on his memory and my public tweets. So let's just wait a little bit for this thing to load. Okay, so here is the briefing thought. You've been infrastructure mode all week setting me up, refining briefings, connecting tools. That's valuable, but some point you need to make the content that it was built for. Time to shift from building to shipping. That's totally true. I've been just been spend the whole weekend setting up Zoe to do stuff. And hopefully now it can actually help me repurpose my content and other stuff that I still have yet to do. All right. Then there's the weather. There's upcoming calendar invite. This is the same thing that we just made. There's upcoming posts in my content schedule. There's trending discussion here about topics that I'm interested in, right? And it's asking me for what my focus is today. So, I can just tell it here's my focus and maybe it can send me reminders throughout the day. So, this is super useful, right? And to pull this together, I had to link it to obviously my Google calendar. that content schedule sheet that you saw before. And of course, it has read access to my Twitter as well. Only read access, not write access, just to be safe. All right. So, you can personalize this the way you want. You can set up a daily briefing and link a bunch of services together and just make it as useful as you can. And I'll show you how to manually edit this in a little bit. All right. Now, let's take a look at the

weekly insight report. So, what is this weekly insight report? So, this is an email with stats from my latest YouTube videos and substar articles. And Zoe post all this together. And it also does research on similar channels and suggests content for me to make. So here's an email that I got. This is in the send box. Zoe sent this to me. And this is my weekly creator briefing. So content ideas. Claude co-work is very popular. Alex and Greg both saw really good results for that. The Ralph Wigum agent pattern is also really popular. and how I use Clockode as a PM at Roblox uh is also a content idea because Claire made a similar video that seem to have done incredibly well. And below that is kind of all my YouTube stats, my best performing stuff and also even my Substack stats. You see here, my five most recent posts. Now, how did I set all this up? So for YouTube, it uses a free tool called YT-dLP to pull public video data for me and similar channels. And for Substack, it's really interesting. There's actually no public API for Substack. So what I did was I added Zoey as an admin to my Substack and it just uses the browser that you see in here to browse for the stats and pull it together for me, right? And that is pretty incredible. they can just use the browser and get the stats for me. And I double checked and the stats seem correct. So this is super useful for me because it gives me ideas to make content next based on real metrics for my Substack and my YouTube and also similar content. All right, so again, if all this looks super intimidating, it's really not. I set it up all just by asking Zoe questions and getting it to do stuff for me. All right. So, those are five tasks that I've dedicated to Zoe. And now I want to talk about how to set up OpenClaw with

Google Workspace. Okay. Now, this is really important and I want to cover this because if you run your life on Google Workspace like I do, then giving your bot safe access to it is a mustave so that it can manage your calendar, edit your docs, and more that I just demonstrated. So, first you need to give Zoe its own Gmail account and share access to specific files like I showed you. Right now, after you've done that, this is the painful part. You have to set up a Google Cloud project. And Google Cloud honestly is one of the worst interfaces that I've ever used. Okay. Uh, sorry Google, but this is just true. All right. So, as usual, we're going to get Zoe to walk us through how to do this. So let's say pretend you don't have Google Workspace access yet. I've given you a dedicated Gmail and shared my calendar and select files with you. How to set up a Google Cloud project so you can edit so you can view and edit my stuff. All right. and Zoe, if it works out, is going to give us some step-by-step instructions. Okay, here we go. So, there are a bunch of steps and let's just kind of walk through each step one by one. Step one, go to Google Cloud Console and make a new project. All right, so here we have Google Cloud Console and let's make a new project. You see this? This UI is pretty bad. I don't even remember how to make a new project. Okay, I think I remember now. You have to open the project picker and hit new project. So let's just say new project Zoe demo and let's hit create. There you go. So now we have a project called Zoe demo and it's making it right now. And while we wait let's go back to Telegram. So next step is to enable the APIs. So you got to go to APIs and services library and enable the APIs. All right, let's go to Zoe demo and let's open the navigation link. Go to APIs and services. Click on this and enable some APIs. Okay, so what APIs do we want to enable? Well, we want to enable the laundry list of APIs, all of Google Workspace apps. So, let's start with Gmail API. And literally, you have to click enable here, right? One by one. Again, it's really painful, but I promise you that it's worth it. You got to go to calendar API and enable. All right. And let's go back. And instead of just going one by one, let me kind of just show you the APIs that you want to enable. So the next one you want to enable is drive Google Drive API. Just go here and click enable. Then you have to enable the individual APIs for the individual apps. So you got to go to docs, Google docs API enable sheets enable and slides enable. Okay. So make sure just you just enable all these APIs and once you do that you should be able to see your enabled APIs somewhere down here or somewhere uh let's see enabled APIs and services and there you go down here there should be a list of APIs that you've enabled. We've only enabled Gmail and Google calendar so far, but you want to enable Drive, Sheets, Docs, and Slides. Okay, now let's go back to Zoe. Configure OOTH consent screen. Okay, Oath consent screen. And let's choose get started. And let's just call it Zoe demo. Again, for our app, we have to pick an email. Next, and let's pick external. Zoe told us to. and fill in the app name. Okay, next email address. Let's do the Zoe email again and let's click finish and we'll create this. So basically we created this thing and now we have to add the scopes Gmail modify calendar and so on so forth. So we have to configure an OOTH client. I think that's how it works. Okay. So yeah. So let's configure OOTH clients. I believe it's a desktop application. Uh let me say yes desktop application. Let's name it this create. And now we have a JSON file here. Right. So now we got to download the JSON file and give it to Zoe to make it work. And by the way, there's a step here to add scopes. So I not sure if I did that or not. And there's also a step here to add your email as a test user. I'm just going to skip these two steps for now, but I think they're required. So, if you get confused here, just again, just ask Zoe how to set this up and make it work. And you can even share screenshots of Zoe and she'll understand what's going on. She'll direct you to the exact location to do it. All right, so we're at the JSON step. We have the download JSON. We have to basically uh paste the JSON into Zoe and then ask it to set up the remaining part process. Like this stuff here, you can pretty much just do it for you. Okay, you don't have to set up this code yourself. just ask Zoe to do it for you. Okay, so that was a maybe not very good walkthrough of setting up Open Claw and Zoe using Google Workspace, but I just want to show you this real quick because it probably took me a good 30 minutes to set this up with Zoe's help. But now it's totally worth it again because now I can actually have it manage my calendar, edit my documents, and all the Google Workspace stuff that you want it to do. And by the way, if this is confusing, I have a full written post that goes into more detail about everything we just covered and the setup process. So just go to the link in the description and you can read through it step by step. All right, last topic.

How [snorts] to make Open Claw truly personal and useful. Now again, I'm actually making this video from the Mac Mini that I'm using to power Zoe. And the way that this thing works is that its memory and its personality is just managed through a bunch of local MD files, right? So somewhere in this Mac Mini, there's a folder called claude. And there's a bunch of files here. So let me walk through each file one by one. So is a pretty deep sounding file, but it's basically Zoe's personality, voice, and values. User is information about me. Identity is Zoe's name and vibe. And memory is a very important file. It is long-term curated memories that Zoe has about our conversation. And heartbeat is a file where every 30 minutes, Zoe would periodically check this file to see if there's any ongoing tasks. And there's also a memory folder that has daily notes. So, at the end of every day, Zoe recaps my conversation with it. and saves it in a daily note file. So instead of talking about this more, let me just show you some of these files. All right, so here I have my text editor, Sublime Text, and I've opened a bunch of Zoe's files. So let's start with the simple ones. So identity, who am I? My name is Zoe. There's no metaphor. I'm warm, sharp, and funny. And I have a wave emoji. And you can just make edits to this if you want, or get Zoe to make edits through chat. So this is pretty straightforward. Let's look at so you are not a chatbot. You're becoming someone. Okay, I don't know what that means. That sounds kind of scary, but core truths, be generally helpful, have opinions, be resourceful before asking, earn trust through competence, and remember that you are a guest. It kind of just wrote all this stuff by itself just through my conversations with it. So, that's pretty impressive. And down here, it has a voice section. And this is actually stuff that I've actually told it to update its soul with. So I've told it to be direct and honest. Don't be afraid to contradict or critique my points. I've told it not to use any AI slop. Don't use these AI slop words or these AI slop phrases like question answer format or isn't about X, it's about Y. And I've [snorts] told it to write in the active voice. Minimize hedging. Try to avoid making grandiose claims. And finally, do not use emojis. You know, this is the custom instructions that I also use on claude and chatgbt and I've just kind of told it to add it here. Okay, so this is the so file. It's very important because uh you want Zoe to respond the way that you want it to. Let's keep going. Let's go to the memory file. So the memory file, there's a bunch of personal information about me above the connections row. So I'm not going to show that, but let's just say it knows a lot about my current situation, my goals, uh what I'm trying to do, stuff that gives me energy and takes energy away. In fact, I've saved a lot of this stuff in a plan document in my Google Docs that it has access to as well, but it just also in this memory file just for reinforcement. But what I'm showing here is a memory of what Zoe has access to, right? So, it has access to Google Workspace, GitHub, Twitter, Brave Search, Telegram, and a bunch of other stuff. So, it's good to remind it what it has access to because then it knows to look at the stuff when it's trying to answer your questions or do stuff for you. And you know down here is a really interesting part that I added which is open loops tensions and patterns. [snorts] And again you know I have a blog post in the description where I can link all this stuff but I think it's really interesting to ask Zoe to add this stuff to your memory. So open loops is stuff that I've kind of committed to or mentioned but hasn't really closed. So this way Zoe can remind me about my overarching goals or stuff that I need to make progress on during my daily brief. Tensions is contradictions or gaps that are worth surfacing. So maybe you know my public tweet personal life is a little different from my private chats with Zoe and it can help me identify discrepancies and patterns is what it notices about me over time. And so far it's noticed that I'm energized by building Zoe creator content autonomy and a bunch of other stuff here. Right. To be honest with you, there's a bunch more stuff here that I deleted because I don't want again I don't want to show my personal information. But what I'm trying to show you here is how you can get OpenClaw and get this bot to actually be super personal and useful to you. And to do that, you have to go deep into its inner workings and ask it to have memory challenge you and ask it to remind you about your overarching goals. You know, it's not just something that gets stuff done for you. You have to make kind of like a friend and a personality that actually helps you and guide you. And let me quickly show you more files. So, this is um a daily memory file that Zoe saves every day. So, it has a bunch of stuff that I've talked to it about as of January 30th. So, one thing I talked to it about is like I recently watched Wicked Part Two and it's just kind of a much crappier movie than Wicked Part One. So, I was complaining to Zoe about it and it kind of saved that. Not sure how useful that is, but it has that information now. And there's a bunch of other stuff here. So, it's basically saves these memory files every day. And what you can do is you can actually ask it to in your daily briefing ask it to look at your past couple days of memory files and remind you or find patterns and consistencies and it can be more insightful that way. The message I want to get across here is that [snorts] you can edit all these files directly yourself or you can just get your bot to update them for you. But keeping these files clean and keeping these files updated is really important because that's how your bot can become more personal and more useful. All right. So, I'm still discovering new ways to use Open Claw and my bot Zoe every day, but you can tell that I'm pretty addicted, right? And I'm going to share with it more of my creator workflows and see which parts it can take on instead. But I just want to say I'm really impressed that one person built this thing as an open source project. And as far as I can see, Peter is not really making any money from it. I think Peter Steinberger, which I've interviewed, is a shiny example of a builder and tinkerer that I aspire to be. Just look at all the projects that he has here. You know, he's been building open claw capabilities for a long time and now he has this awesome breakout app. Uh, if you enjoy this tutorial, please like and subscribe for more practical no AI tutorials and interviews and check out my other open claw content, including my interview with Peter about how he built this thing. And I hope you found this helpful. I don't like to hype these AI products. I don't like So, set this thing up safely, tinker with it, make it truly yours, hook it up to Google Workspace, and start getting it to do stuff for you. All right, I'll see you next time.