Quickstart

Install netclaw, answer a few setup questions, and talk to your assistant. Allow about five minutes, plus a minute or two on first start while the daemon fetches its memory models. This is the short path with no detours. Your first conversation explains what you see in the chat, and Build your first assistant is the long tutorial that adds tools, memory and a reminder.

Before you begin

A 64-bit Linux, an Apple Silicon Mac or Windows x64. On Linux you also need curl, the ICU library (libicu) and tzdata. Without ICU the daemon won’t start, and without tzdata the identity step rejects every timezone but UTC. See requirements.
About 1 GB of free memory and outbound access to releases.netclaw.dev and huggingface.co.
An LLM: an API key for one of the eight providers init lists (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter and DeepSeek among them), or the address of a server you run, such as Ollama or llama.cpp.

1. Install

curl -sSL https://releases.netclaw.dev/install.sh | bash

The installer adds netclaw to your PATH for new shells. Load it into this one:

. ~/.netclaw/env

On Windows, use the PowerShell installer and restart your terminal. Check it worked:

netclaw --version

netclaw 0.28.2 (commit 7419d84, built 2026-10-29T00:09:05Z)

2. Run the setup wizard

netclaw init

The wizard asks for four things:

Step	You choose
Provider	An LLM provider, its credentials or endpoint, and a default model
Identity	Agent name, communication style, your name, timezone
Security posture	Personal, Team or Public
Health check	Nothing. It writes config, starts the daemon and opens chat.

Team and Public add a fifth step, enabled features. The header says “Step 1 of 5” until you pick a posture, then drops to “of 4” if you chose Personal.

Provider

Press a number to pick a provider, then enter its credentials. For llama.cpp or vLLM, pick OpenAI-compatible and give the server address, with or without /v1: http://llm.example.internal:8080. The endpoint field starts with http://localhost:11434 already in it and your cursor sits at the end, so press Backspace until the default is gone before you type. After a connectivity check you pick a default model.

Netclaw Setup, Step 1 of 5, LLM Provider, listing eight providers from Anthropic to Venice.ai with Anthropic highlighted

The first screen lists all eight providers, and the counter reads “of 5” until you choose a posture.

Identity and posture

Answer the four identity prompts, then pick Personal for a single-user machine. The timezone must be an IANA id such as America/Chicago. UTC is already filled in. See the security model for Team and Public.

Netclaw Setup, Step 2 of 5, Identity, with four communication styles from Concise & casual to Detailed & formal

The style you pick here shapes the assistant’s first greeting, and you can redo this step later from netclaw init.

Netclaw Setup, Step 3 of 5, Security Posture, offering Personal, Team and Public with Personal highlighted

The grey text under the options summarizes what each posture allows. Channels are set up later in netclaw config.

Health check

The wizard writes ~/.netclaw/config/netclaw.json, starts the daemon and checks the provider. A clean run looks like this:

✓  LLM provider configured (OpenAI-compatible (llama.cpp / vLLM / DwarfStar ds4))
✓  Model selected (<your model>)
✓  Memory backend (SQLite)
✓  Configuration written

Netclaw Setup, Step 4 of 4, Health Check, with four green check lines and an Applying configuration spinner

The four checks go green while the daemon applies the new configuration, and the step counter ends at 4 of 4 because this was a Personal setup. This capture used an OpenAI-compatible endpoint serving qwen2:0.5b, so that’s what the first two lines name. Yours name your provider and model. The spinner is the last frame init shows before it opens the chat.

If the daemon fails to start, the last line reads “Setup complete with warnings” and tells you to run netclaw daemon start, then netclaw chat --onboarding. On a bare Linux image the cause is usually a missing libicu. See troubleshooting.

3. Send your first message

After a clean health check, init opens the chat and your assistant greets you by name and asks what you want to use it for. Answer in plain language. The first reply can take 30 seconds or more on a local model. Press Ctrl+Q to leave.

If init ended with warnings, there’s no greeting. Fix the warning, run netclaw daemon start, then netclaw chat --onboarding. It opens the same conversation.

Verify it works

netclaw status

overall: healthy
version: 0.28.2 (commit 7419d84, built 2026-10-29T00:10:12Z)
daemon: PID 3644, uptime 0m 24s, endpoint http://127.0.0.1:5199
persistence: Sqlite
memory: sqlite (healthy)
telemetry: disabled
model: <your model> (provider: openai-compatible, context: 131,072 tokens)
connectors:
- discord: disabled (disabled)
- mattermost: disabled (disabled)
- slack: disabled (disabled)
- tui: healthy (enabled)

overall: healthy and a reply in the chat mean you’re done. If something looks off, run netclaw doctor. A WARN about a missing secrets.json is normal when your provider needs no API key.

What’s next

Your first conversation: what to try, the keys that matter and your first approval prompt
Build your first assistant: identity, tools, memory and a reminder that reports back
netclaw config: connect Slack, Discord or Mattermost, enable web search, set exposure

Installation: every platform, update and uninstall
netclaw init: the wizard in full, including re-running it
Self-hosted providers: Ollama, llama.cpp and vLLM settings
netclaw status and netclaw doctor: check health when something is wrong

Resources

Ollama: run models locally with one command
llama.cpp server: an OpenAI-compatible server for GGUF models
OpenRouter: one API key for many hosted models