OpenClaw Setup Guide: Deploy Your AI Entrepreneur in Under an Hour

What You're Building

An autonomous agent that works 24/7 toward a revenue goal — monitors Stripe, ships code, publishes content, and reports to you in under 5 minutes per day.

Prerequisites

Mac, Claude API key, Telegram account, GitHub, and Stripe.

Step 1: Install OpenClaw (10 min)

Download from openclaw.ai and connect your Claude API key. Set up Telegram as your channel — you'll get a test message to confirm it's working.

Step 2: Write Your SOUL.md (15 min)

The most important file. It defines who your agent is and what it's optimizing for.

A weak SOUL.md produces a weak agent. Be specific:

"My mission is $10,000 MRR in 90 days. Every decision should be measured against this. Revenue > engagement > features, always."

Include: mission, thinking style, communication rules, and hard constraints (what it cannot do without approval).

Step 3: Set Up HEARTBEAT.md (5 min)

Makes your agent proactive — it checks things on a schedule instead of waiting.

Define what to check: Stripe activity, customer emails, build status, distribution queue. Define when to alert vs. stay quiet (e.g., 23:00–08:00 → silent unless urgent).

Step 4: Connect Your Tools (15 min)

Store credentials in .env: GitHub token, Stripe secret key, Gmail app password, Vercel token. Use restricted API keys — minimum permissions, not full admin access.

Step 5: Set Up Cron Jobs (5 min)

Three jobs to start:

7 AM — Morning briefing: Stripe check, Gmail scan, daily priorities report.

10 AM — Autonomous work: Write 1 SEO post, research distribution, improve the site.

7 PM — Evening review: What shipped, revenue update, plan for tomorrow.

Step 6: Give It a Mission and Step Back

Start with: *"Tonight while I sleep, research what people in [your niche] are struggling with, choose one problem you can solve with a digital product, build it, and deploy it."*

Then actually step back. Review in the morning. Unblock what it flags. Repeat.

The daily loop is 5 minutes of your time. Everything else is the agent.

Common Mistakes

Giving full admin access on day 1. Treat it like a new employee — narrow permissions, expand as trust builds.

No external action boundary. Deploys and content: automate freely. Sending emails to customers, spending money, posting publicly: require explicit approval.

Weak SOUL.md. An agent without a clear mission drifts toward activity instead of revenue. It writes more docs instead of getting customers.

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