OpenClaw - Ollama - NFHN Reader

OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant that runs on your own devices. It bridges messaging services (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, iMessage, and more) to AI coding agents through a centralized gateway.

Quick start

Ollama handles everything automatically:

Install — If OpenClaw isn’t installed, Ollama prompts to install it via npm
Security — On the first launch, a security notice explains the risks of tool access
Model — Pick a model from the selector (local or cloud)
Onboarding — Ollama configures the provider, installs the gateway daemon, sets your model as the primary, and installs the web search and fetch plugin
Gateway — Starts in the background and opens the OpenClaw TUI

Web search and fetch

OpenClaw ships with a web search and fetch plugin that gives local or cloud models the ability to search the web and extract readable page content.

Web search and fetch is enabled automatically when launching OpenClaw through Ollama. To install the plugin directly:

openclaw plugins install @ollama/openclaw-web-search

Configure without launching

To change the model without starting the gateway and TUI:

ollama launch openclaw --config

To use a specific model directly:

ollama launch openclaw --model kimi-k2.5:cloud

If the gateway is already running, it restarts automatically to pick up the new model.

Recommended models

Cloud models:

kimi-k2.5:cloud — Multimodal reasoning with subagents
qwen3.5:cloud — Reasoning, coding, and agentic tool use with vision
glm-5.1:cloud — Reasoning and code generation
minimax-m2.7:cloud — Fast, efficient coding and real-world productivity

Local models:

gemma4 — Reasoning and code generation locally (~16 GB VRAM)
qwen3.5 — Reasoning, coding, and visual understanding locally (~11 GB VRAM)

More models at ollama.com/search.

Non-interactive (headless) mode

Run OpenClaw without interaction for use in Docker, CI/CD, or scripts:

ollama launch openclaw --model kimi-k2.5:cloud --yes

The --yes flag auto-pulls the model, skips selectors, and requires --model to be specified.

Connect messaging apps

openclaw configure --section channels