Contributing to OpenClaw

Welcome to the lobster tank! 🦞

Quick Links

GitHub: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw
Discord: https://discord.gg/qkhbAGHRBT
X/Twitter: @steipete / @openclaw

Maintainers

Peter Steinberger - Benevolent Dictator
- GitHub: @steipete · X: @steipete
Shadow - Discord + Slack subsystem
- GitHub: @thewilloftheshadow · X: @4shad0wed
Jos - Telegram, API, Nix mode
- GitHub: @joshp123 · X: @jjpcodes
Christoph Nakazawa - JS Infra
- GitHub: @cpojer · X: @cnakazawa

How to Contribute

Bugs & small fixes → Open a PR!
New features / architecture → Start a GitHub Discussion or ask in Discord first
Questions → Discord #setup-help

Before You PR

Test locally with your OpenClaw instance
Run tests: pnpm build && pnpm check && pnpm test
Keep PRs focused (one thing per PR)
Describe what & why

Control UI Decorators

The Control UI uses Lit with legacy decorators (current Rollup parsing does not support accessor fields required for standard decorators). When adding reactive fields, keep the legacy style:

@state() foo = "bar";
@property({ type: Number }) count = 0;

The root tsconfig.json is configured for legacy decorators (experimentalDecorators: true) with useDefineForClassFields: false. Avoid flipping these unless you are also updating the UI build tooling to support standard decorators.

AI/Vibe-Coded PRs Welcome! 🤖

Built with Codex, Claude, or other AI tools? Awesome - just mark it!

Please include in your PR:

Mark as AI-assisted in the PR title or description
Note the degree of testing (untested / lightly tested / fully tested)
Include prompts or session logs if possible (super helpful!)
Confirm you understand what the code does

AI PRs are first-class citizens here. We just want transparency so reviewers know what to look for.

Current Focus & Roadmap 🗺

We are currently prioritizing:

Stability: Fixing edge cases in channel connections (WhatsApp/Telegram).
UX: Improving the onboarding wizard and error messages.
Skills: Expanding the library of bundled skills and improving the Skill Creation developer experience.
Performance: Optimizing token usage and compaction logic.

Check the GitHub Issues for "good first issue" labels!

2.7 KiB Raw Blame History