Migrate from OpenClaw to ClawStaff: Step-by-Step Guide

You’ve been running OpenClaw. It works. Your agents handle Slack messages, triage GitHub issues, maybe summarize Notion docs. But you’re spending engineering time on infrastructure that isn’t your product: container orchestration, credential management, uptime monitoring, updates.

ClawStaff is built on OpenClaw. This isn’t a replatform. It’s the same foundation with managed infrastructure, team collaboration, and ClawCage security isolation on top. Your API keys, your configurations, your agent behavior: all of it carries over. You’re upgrading the infrastructure layer, not starting from scratch.

This guide walks through the full migration, step by step.

Pre-Migration Checklist

Before you touch anything, document what you’re running today. You’ll need this information when recreating your setup in ClawStaff.

OpenClaw version and configuration:

Run openclaw --version to confirm your current release
Export your config.json or openclaw.yaml. You’ll reference these settings during setup

Connected channels:

List every platform your agents currently operate in: Slack workspaces, Telegram groups, Discord servers, GitHub repos, Notion workspaces
Note which agent connects to which channel. This mapping transfers directly

Active skills and their configurations:

Document each skill your agents use, including any custom parameters
If you’ve written custom skills, keep the source code accessible. You can port these to ClawStaff

API keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, others):

Gather your existing API keys. These transfer directly via BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)
Same keys, same rate limits, same spend. ClawStaff doesn’t proxy or mark up your API usage

Custom agent configurations and prompts:

Export system prompts, temperature settings, model selections, and tool permission configs
Screenshot or copy any agent-specific settings you’ve tuned over time

Save all of this in a migration doc. You’ll work through it methodically in the steps below.

Step 1: Set Up Your ClawStaff Workspace

Create your account at clawstaff.ai and set up your workspace.

Sign up with your work email
Name your workspace. This is your team’s home in ClawStaff (e.g., “Acme Engineering”)
Choose your plan. Solo ($59/mo, 2 Claws) is a good starting point for migration. You can scale up after you’ve verified everything works

Your workspace is where you’ll manage all your Claws, integrations, and team members from a single dashboard. If you’re coming from OpenClaw, think of this as your orchestration layer. The part you’ve been building yourself.

Step 2: Connect Integrations Channel by Channel

This is where you reconnect the platforms your agents already operate in. Work through these one at a time. Don’t rush this step.

Slack

Go to Integrations → Slack in your ClawStaff dashboard
Click Connect Slack. This triggers an OAuth flow
Authorize ClawStaff for your Slack workspace
Select which channels your Claws should have access to

Your OpenClaw bot token won’t transfer (Slack OAuth tokens are app-specific), but the OAuth flow takes about 30 seconds. Select the same channels your OpenClaw agents were monitoring.

Microsoft Teams

Go to Integrations → Microsoft Teams
ClawStaff provisions an Azure Bot on your behalf
Approve the bot in your Teams admin panel
Select the teams and channels to connect

If you were running a custom Bot Framework integration with OpenClaw, this replaces that entire setup. No more managing Azure Bot Service configurations yourself.

GitHub

Go to Integrations → GitHub
Generate a Personal Access Token (PAT) with the scopes your agents need (typically repo, issues, pull_requests)
Paste the token into ClawStaff
Select which repositories to connect

If you already have a PAT configured for OpenClaw, you can use the same token. Just make sure the scopes match what your Claws will need.

Notion

Go to Integrations → Notion
Click Connect Notion to start the OAuth flow
Authorize access and select which workspaces and pages to share

Notion’s OAuth connection means your Claws can read and write to the pages you specify, same as your OpenClaw setup, but managed through the dashboard.

Go to Integrations → Telegram
Enter your existing Bot Token (from @BotFather)
ClawStaff connects using your token directly

This is the simplest migration. If you already have a Telegram bot token from your OpenClaw setup, paste it in and you’re connected. Same bot, same groups, new infrastructure.

Discord

Go to Integrations → Discord
Enter your Discord Bot Token
Select which servers and channels to monitor

Like Telegram, if you have an existing Discord bot token, it transfers directly. Your bot keeps its identity. Users in your Discord server won’t notice the switch.

Step 3: Configure BYOK Keys

This is one of the fastest steps. Your existing OpenAI and Anthropic API keys work directly in ClawStaff. No changes needed.

Go to Settings → API Keys in your dashboard
Add your OpenAI API key (the same one from your OpenClaw config.json)
Add your Anthropic API key (same deal)
Optionally add any other provider keys your agents use

What BYOK means in practice: ClawStaff routes your Claw’s inference requests using your keys. Your spend shows up on your OpenAI/Anthropic billing dashboard exactly like it does today. No markup, no middleman, no surprises.

If you were running gpt-4o or claude-sonnet-4-20250514 in OpenClaw, your Claws will use the same models at the same cost.

Step 4: Deploy Your First Claw

Now you recreate your OpenClaw agent configuration as a Claw. Start with your most important agent: the one your team relies on daily.

Click New Claw from your dashboard
Name it with something descriptive (e.g., “Issue Triager” or “Standup Summarizer”)
Set the system prompt by pasting the system prompt from your OpenClaw agent config. If you’ve tuned this over weeks or months, it transfers exactly as-is
Select the model. Choose the same model your OpenClaw agent was running
Connect integrations by attaching the Slack channels, GitHub repos, or Notion pages this specific Claw needs access to
Configure tool permissions to define what this Claw can do: read messages, create issues, update pages. Scope it to exactly what it needs, nothing more
Deploy

Each Claw runs in its own ClawCage, an isolated container with scoped permissions and dedicated storage. This is the infrastructure upgrade you’re here for: your agent config stays the same, but now it runs in a sandboxed environment you don’t have to manage.

Repeat this for each agent you were running in OpenClaw. If you had three agents, deploy three Claws.

Step 5: Test Before Going Live

Don’t switch from openclaw to ClawStaff all at once. Run them in parallel and verify.

Integration checks:

Send a test message in each connected Slack channel, confirm the Claw responds
Create a test issue in a connected GitHub repo, verify the Claw picks it up
Update a connected Notion page, check that the Claw processes it

Response quality:

Compare Claw responses to your OpenClaw agent responses for the same inputs
If you’re using the same model and system prompt, responses should be functionally identical
Tune if needed. The dashboard makes prompt iteration faster than editing config files

Permission verification:

Confirm each Claw can only access the channels and repos you explicitly connected
Try triggering the Claw from a channel it shouldn’t have access to. Verify it doesn’t respond

Latency check:

Time the response from message to reply
ClawStaff’s managed infrastructure should match or beat your self-hosted latency, depending on your current server setup

Once you’re confident everything works, shut down your OpenClaw instance. Your Claws are live.

Step 6: Team Onboarding

With OpenClaw, your agents were likely managed by one engineer. ClawStaff makes this a team capability.

Invite team members by going to Settings → Team and sending invites by email
Set permissions to define who can deploy Claws, manage integrations, or only view dashboards
Deploy per-member Claws. Each team member can have their own dedicated Claws. A developer gets an issue triager, a PM gets a standup summarizer, a support lead gets a ticket responder

This is the shift from “we have a bot” to “every team member has an AI coworker.” Per-Claw pricing means adding agents scales linearly, with no per-seat charges eating into your budget.

What You Gain After Migration

Here’s what changes when you switch from openclaw to managed ClawStaff:

ClawCage isolation. Every Claw runs in its own sandboxed container with scoped permissions. No more worrying about agent-to-agent interference or credential exposure
Multi-agent dashboard. Manage all your Claws from one place. See what each agent is doing, audit actions, kill agents that misbehave
Cross-tool workflows. A single Claw can monitor Slack, create GitHub issues, and update Notion pages in one workflow. No custom glue code required
Managed updates. ClawStaff handles infrastructure updates, security patches, and platform upgrades. No more pulling new OpenClaw releases and debugging breaking changes
Team collaboration. Multiple team members manage and deploy Claws. Not just “the one engineer who knows how the bot works”
Uptime you don’t manage. No more SSH-ing into your VPS at 2 AM because the agent crashed

Your agent logic stays the same. Your API keys stay the same. Your integrations connect to the same channels. The difference is everything underneath (the infrastructure, security, and team layer) is now handled for you.

Ready to Migrate?

If you’re running OpenClaw today and spending engineering cycles on infrastructure instead of your product, ClawStaff is the upgrade path the project was designed for.

Join the waitlist →

Have questions about migrating your specific setup? Reach out to us, we’ll walk you through it.