Contributing

Purpose 2: Curate and contribute high-quality skills through teamwork.

AcaClaw is for the global academic community — contributions from researchers are especially welcome.

How to Contribute

Create a Skill

Write a skill for your academic domain in the acaclaw-skills repository.

  1. Fork acaclaw-skills
  2. Create your skill following the SKILL.md format
  3. Add tests that verify the skill works in the shared AcaClaw Conda environment
  4. Open a PR — you’ll be credited as Creator

Test Skills

Run skills against real-world data in your domain. Report edge cases, write test cases.

  • Credited as Tester

Fix Bugs

Track down and fix edge cases in existing skills.

  • Credited as Debugger

Review Code

Review PRs before skills are published to ClawHub.

  • Credited as Reviewer

Write Documentation

Tutorials, usage guides, translations.

  • Credited as Documenter

Maintain Skills

Keep existing skills compatible with new OpenClaw releases and environment updates.

  • Credited as Maintainer

Recognized Roles

Role Description
Creator Original author who designed and implemented the skill
Author Wrote significant portions of the skill’s functionality
Tester Validated the skill across environments, wrote test cases
Maintainer Keeps the skill updated and compatible with new OpenClaw releases
Debugger Fixed critical bugs or edge cases
Reviewer Reviewed code and provided quality feedback before publishing
Documenter Wrote usage guides, examples, or translations

Every contribution is tracked, every contributor is named.

Quality Gates

Before a skill is published to ClawHub, it must pass:

Gate What it checks
Code review At least one reviewer signs off
Integration tests Skill runs against pinned OpenClaw version
Environment compatibility Dependencies resolve cleanly in shared Conda env
Security review No exfiltration, no dangerous commands
Compatibility test Works in both Standard and Maximum security modes
Attribution check ## Contributors section present and complete

Environment Compatibility

All skills share a single Conda environment (env/conda/environment-base.yml). When adding a new skill:

  1. Declare only the packages your skill actually imports in skills.json
  2. Ensure your version requirements are compatible with the existing environment
  3. Run the full test suite to verify no conflicts with other skills
  4. If a conflict exists, work with maintainers to resolve it before publishing

A skill that introduces an unresolvable dependency conflict will not be shipped.

Attribution

  • Every skill includes a ## Contributors table in its SKILL.md (rendered on ClawHub)
  • Every contributor is showcased on acaclaw.com/hub
  • Git history is the canonical authorship record

Contributing to the AcaClaw App

The sections above focus on contributing skills. The commands below are for developing the AcaClaw application and distribution itself, not the separate acaclaw-skills repository.

Development Setup

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/acaclaw/acaclaw.git
cd acaclaw

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run tests
npx vitest run

# Type check
npx tsc --noEmit

Local Development Commands

Run these commands from the repository root when working on the local app:

Task Command
Start the local gateway and open the UI bash scripts/start.sh
Start the local gateway without opening the UI automatically bash scripts/start.sh --no-browser
Check whether the gateway is running bash scripts/start.sh --status
Stop the local gateway bash scripts/stop.sh
Restart the local gateway bash scripts/stop.sh && bash scripts/start.sh
Reinstall the current checkout into your local AcaClaw profile after plugin/script/config changes bash scripts/install.sh
Rebuild and deploy UI-only changes npm --prefix ui run build && npm run deploy

License

By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the MIT License.