Colophon.A note on the making of this manual — the who, the what, the how, and the principles kept throughout.
This volume is the OpenClaw Skills manual — a field guide to the forty-eight modules presently attested by the Registry, set as if the Academy it invokes had a press of its own. It is a record of what is being built by a distributed company of correspondents writing small, sharp tools for terminal-native agents, and of the conventions those tools share.
It has been typeset on bone paper, in navy ink, at the Skill Registry in Volume I. The display is cut from a condensed slab; the body is set in a modern sans of generous x-height; every specimen and install command is carried in a monospaced face. Running heads mark each fascicle; § anchors mark every turn; figures are ruled, numbered, captioned. The layout owes its debts — which it pays openly in the catalogue opposite — to academic journals, technical manuals, the Encyclopædia Britannica plates, and to the patent drawings of the mid-1960s.
The register is held to a single rule: the chrome is ceremonial; the payload is operational. The running heads, the § numbers, the nameplates, the FIG. captions — these are the Academy's grammar, and they may be read for atmosphere. Every install command, every manifest URL, every module slug is literal, and will install the module it names. The Registry is real. The modules are real. Only the manual is fiction, and even the manual does not lie.
A Register of Tools & Refusals
01Typefaces employed
- DisplayAnton — an imagined condensed slab, set at large bodies for mastheads and figures.
- BodyInter Tight — a modern sans with generous x-height, set at 15/24 for comfort over long columns.
- MonoJetBrains Mono — carries every install command, every manifest, every specimen.
- Ital.Anton italic stands in for the typesetter's note; no separate serif italic is commissioned.
02Layout ideals referenced
- JournalsAcademic reviews — ruled heads, numbered sections, generous outer margins.
- ManualsMid-century technical manuals — FIG. captions, parts lists, § anchors, tabular figures.
- PlatesThe Encyclopædia Britannica plates — ruled diagrams, small-caps legends.
- Patents1960s patent drawings — hairline rules, isometric clarity, nothing coloured that could be line.
03Anti-patterns refused
- NoPastel gradient backgrounds.
- NoBento grids; no marketing card lattice.
- NoChat-bubble hero; no "meet the assistant" framing.
- NoEmoji as payload. No stock photography. No testimonials.
- NoAcronyms invented for atmosphere alone — every doc., issn, vol. is kept consistent across editions.
The voice of the manual is that of a careful correspondent — writ, not writes; attested, not launched; issued, not shipped. The lexicon permits: module, fascicle, specimen, register, correspondent, erratum, folio. The lexicon forbids: onboarding, ecosystem, stack, power-user, workflow, seamless. Where the operational payload disagrees with the register, the payload is kept and the register steps aside.
On Methods — How Modules Come to Press
- 01Attestation Modules are fetched from
openclaw/clawhuband entered into the Registry only after attestation — a correspondent of the Academy countersigns the module's manifest, confirms its runtime matrix, and appends an attestation line to its record. Unattested submissions remain in the margin and do not receive a § number. - 02Versioning Editions of the manual advance by minor number (
1.2 → 1.3) when any attested module is added, revised, or withdrawn. Major numbers (1.x → 2.0) are reserved for a change in the Protocol,openclaw.skills.v1, which has not yet occurred. Each module carries its own revision, independent of the manual's edition. - 03Erratum Corrections to any issued module are published as errata on the changelog page, are re-entered at the manifest step of the pipeline (cf. Fig. 7), and carry the date of first issue alongside the date of correction. Errata do not silently overwrite; the original entry remains legible beneath the revision.
- 04Withdrawal A module may be withdrawn by the Academy only with a signed notice from its correspondent and a replacement reference where possible. Withdrawn modules remain listed, struck through, with a pointer to the replacement. The Registry does not forget.
Machine-readable at /llms.txt, /manifest.json, and per-module .md mirrors under /skills/<slug>.
ISSN 7301-0642 · DOC. 001 · EDITION 1.3