Automation

Make your agent proactive with cron jobs, hooks, webhooks, and event-driven triggers.

OpenClaw isn't just reactive — it can initiate actions on its own schedule.

Cron Jobs

Schedule recurring tasks via the Gateway scheduler:

openclaw cron add "daily-briefing" --schedule "0 8 * * *" --message "Give me my daily briefing: weather, calendar, top emails"

Manage with CLI:

openclaw cron list
openclaw cron remove daily-briefing

Or configure in openclaw.json for persistence. Jobs use standard cron syntax.

Hooks

Event-driven triggers that fire on specific conditions. Hooks use a HOOK.md metadata format similar to SKILL.md.

Bundled hooks are available out of the box. Hook packs can be distributed via npm or archives.

Hook types:

• Command hooks — triggered by user slash commands
• Event hooks — triggered by system events (new message, session start, etc.)
• SOUL Evil Hook — special hook for prompt injection detection and defense

Example use cases: auto-summarize long threads, auto-tag emails, send daily recaps.

Webhooks

Expose HTTP endpoints for external triggers. The Gateway supports:

• /hooks/wake — Wake the agent from external systems
• /hooks/agent — Send a message to the agent via HTTP
• /hooks/<name> — Custom mapped webhook handlers

{
  "webhooks": {
    "deploy-notify": {
      "path": "/hooks/deploy",
      "message": "A new deployment was triggered: {{body.repo}} {{body.branch}}"
    }
  }
}

Security: Use authentication tokens, bind to localhost, and use HTTPS for external-facing webhooks.

Gmail PubSub

Connect to Gmail push notifications. When a new email arrives, OpenClaw can:

• Triage and categorize
• Draft a reply
• Notify you on WhatsApp/Telegram with a summary
• Auto-archive low-priority messages

Polls

Periodically check external sources (APIs, RSS feeds, websites) for changes. Configure polling intervals and trigger actions when changes are detected.

Auth Monitoring

Automatically monitor authentication status for connected services. Get alerted when:

• OAuth tokens are expiring
• API keys are approaching rate limits
• Channel connections drop

Cron vs Heartbeat

• Cron: Time-based scheduling. “Do X every day at 8am.”
• Heartbeat: Interval-based check-ins. “Check status every 5 minutes.”

Use cron for scheduled tasks, heartbeat for monitoring and keepalive.

Real-World Automation Examples