How to Deploy Your Own AI Agent: The Complete OpenClaw Setup Guide
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Deploy a 24/7 AI agent on a VPS, connect it to Telegram, and build real developer workflows in under 20 minutes .
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If you've been following the AI space, you've seen the demos. Agents that write code, manage calendars, send emails. Impressive stuff, in controlled environments with perfect prompts and zero real-world friction.
This guide is different. ☝🏻
By the end of it, you'll have a working AI agent deployed on a server , connected to your phone, and actually doing things: deploying code, triaging your inbox, running research, remembering your projects, and executing custom automations you built yourself.
No toy demos. No theory. A complete step-by-step walkthrough of exactly how to set this up, plus five real workflows you can start using today.
If you prefer video, I've got a full tutorial covering everything below. Watch it here . Otherwise, keep reading.
OpenClaw is not an AI model. It's not a chatbot. It's not another ChatGPT wrapper.
It's an orchestration layer . You pick the brain: Claude, GPT, Gemini, a local model through Ollama. OpenClaw gives that brain a body.
A body that can open a browser, write and run code, send emails, read your Google Drive, manage your calendar, and deploy to production. All through the messaging app you already use: Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack.
It comes down to three things that make it different from every other AI tool:
Full computer control . Your browser, your terminal, your email, your docs. Anything you can do on a computer, your agent can do. Not "suggest what to type." Actually do it.
Persistent memory. It remembers last week's conversation. It knows your projects, your preferences, your decisions. Start on Telegram in the morning, pick it up on your laptop at night. The context carries over.
You text it like a coworker No app. No dashboard. You open Telegram, send a message, it responds. Give it a name, give it a profile picture. You're not using a tool. You're delegating to a team member.
Every other AI tool works like this:
you go to it -> you give it a task -> it gives you text back -> you copy-paste -> you close the tab
Tomorrow you start from zero. OpenClaw never closes.
If you've been looking into OpenClaw, you've probably seen people buying Mac Minis to run it. Dedicated machines, sitting under their desk, running 24/7.
You don't need that.
OpenClaw runs on any Linux machine. A $5/month VPS does the exact same job as a $600 Mac Mini , except it's already online, already backed up, and if something breaks, you click a button and get a fresh one.
But there's a bigger reason: Security
Running OpenClaw on a VPS means your agent gets its own isolated machine. It can't touch your personal files, your passwords, your browser history . It's sandboxed by default. Your conversations, your data, your API keys all stay on your server. Nobody else has access. The gateway uses high-complexity authentication by default, so nobody can connect to your agent without your token.
And because OpenClaw is fully open source, you can audit every line of code yourself. This isn't blind trust. It's verifiable.
That security concern everyone spends 40 minutes on? A VPS solves it architecturally.
We're using Hostinger because they have a one-click OpenClaw template. You skip all the manual Docker setup, the SSH config, the dependency installs. Click a button, it deploys, and you're configuring your agent in minutes instead of hours .
Here's the process:
Hostinger will pre-install Docker, the OpenClaw container, and the gateway automatically. On any other provider, you would SSH in, pull images, and write Docker Compose files yourself. Here, the template handles all of that.
During setup, Hostinger will ask for your AI API key. This is the brain behind your agent.
If you're going with Claude (recommended):
If you prefer OpenAI: Same process at platform.openai.com.
Important note on billing: API usage is separate from any ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription. It's pay-per-use. You get some free credits to start, which is enough to test everything. But if you hit rate limits, especially on bigger models like Claude Opus or GPT-4o, add a payment method and load $10-20 in credits.
Pro tip: Consider using a lighter model like Claude Sonnet for day-to-day tasks. It's fast, cheap, and handles 90% of what you'll throw at it. Save Opus for heavy lifting, deep research, complex code. You can switch models anytime in the dashboard.
Give it a minute to provision. Once it's running, navigate to the OpenClaw dashboard via the provided URL.
This is your command center, connected apps, AI model configuration, skills, memory, everything. Bookmark it.
The key thing most people miss: the Chat button in the sidebar. This is a direct conversation with your agent. You can configure almost everything just by talking to it.
We're starting with Telegram because it's the fastest setup — your bot gets its own identity, its own name, its own profile picture, all for free. No second phone number needed.
Note on WhatsApp: WhatsApp works too, but it requires linking your own number, meaning the bot runs on your account rather than showing up as a separate contact. For the best "texting a teammate" experience on WhatsApp, grab a cheap eSIM and register a new WhatsApp on that number. For this guide, we're using Telegram.
While still in BotFather :
This sounds trivial, but when you're texting this thing at 7 AM, it should feel like messaging a team member, not a terminal.
Open your bot in Telegram and send a message like "hey."
You'll get a response with a pairing code:
This is a security feature. The bot doesn't let just anyone control it. To approve yourself:
In the dashboard Chat , tell it:
Set my Telegram user ID [YOUR_ID] as the owner.
Now you have full control over your agent from any channel.
Without this step, your bot will politely refuse to let you change its core files from Telegram.
This is the single most important thing you'll configure . OpenClaw uses a file called (SOUL.md) to define your agent's personality , values , and behavior . Every time your agent wakes up, it reads this file first. It reads itself into being.
The best part? You set it up by talking to your agent. In the dashboard Chat , send something like:
Update your SOUL.md with the following:
This isn't a generic one-liner. The structure matters: Core Truths define behavior, Communication Style defines voice, and Boundaries define limits.
You're not limited to this example. Want it to be a research assistant? A project manager? A coding mentor? Whatever your workflow needs, describe it.
For more inspiration, check out souls.directory , a community library of personality templates.
Pull out your phone. Open Telegram. Message your bot:
Hey Dev, what can you do?
If it responds with a summary of its capabilities, you're done. You've got a deployed AI agent, running on a VPS, connected to your phone, powered by the AI model you chose.
That whole setup took about 15 minutes .
Now let's put it to work.
My GitHub username is [username]. Here's my Vercel token: [token]
You only do this once. It remembers.
Build a simple dashboard that shows my GitHub commit activity for the last 30 days. Use Next.js and deploy it to Vercel.
Send your agent:
Scan my inbox. What actually needs my attention today?
It scans everything, categorizes by priority, and tells you what matters. Recruiter spam? Filtered as noise. A real bug report from GitHub? Flagged with the link. A sponsor inquiry with a low budget? Summarized with key terms and a flag that the budget is below your rate.
Then:
Draft a counter-proposal. Professional tone. Push the budget up and ask about Q2 timeline.
Your agent drafts a reply in your tone, referencing the actual conversation thread. Approve it or tell it what to change.
The real power move:
Set up a morning email briefing. Every day at 8 AM, scan my inbox and send me a summary of anything that needs a response.
Tomorrow morning at 8, before you open your laptop, you'll have a message waiting with everything you need to know. Every morning after that, automatically.
Research the top 5 AI agent frameworks right now. Compare features, GitHub stars, community activity, and pricing. Send me a report.
This comes back in about four minutes. It browses the web, pulls data from GitHub, cross-references documentation, and organizes it into something actionable: specific numbers, pros and cons, a recommendation.
How long would that take manually? An hour? Two?
Set it on a schedule:
Every Monday morning, research what happened in the AI agent space last week and send me a digest.
Weekly research assistant that never misses a week.
Every conversation you have with your agent, it remembers. Permanently. It builds context about your projects, preferences, and decisions over time.
After weeks of feeding it context about your work, you can ask:
What do you know about [project name]?
It responds with a detailed summary, not from a document you uploaded, but from context it built up across conversations. You asking it to research topics, draft outlines, compare tools. It assembled the picture over time.
You can also feed it directly. Drop a PDF, a Google Doc link, a Notion page:
Read this document and add it to your context about [project].
Every future conversation includes that information. Your agent gets smarter every time you interact with it.
OpenClaw has a skills system: plugins that extend what your agent can do. Thousands of community-built skills are available. The real unlock is building your own, through conversation:
Create a new skill that monitors [repo] for new issues every evening at 6 PM. Categorize them by priority based on labels and content, and send me a summary on Telegram.
You didn't write a config file. You didn't read documentation. You described what you wanted and your agent built it.
Once you understand how skills work, you start seeing automations everywhere: daily standups from GitHub commits, weekly competitor analysis, auto-responses to common repo questions, sponsor deadline reminders, invoice tracking.
Your agent becomes a system designed specifically for how you work.
Memory management. Your agent accumulates context fast. Periodically review what it's remembering and flush anything outdated. Do this before it hits compaction. Once it auto-compacts, you lose control over what gets kept.
Multiple models. You're not locked into one AI. Run Claude for long-context reasoning and code, swap in GPT for specific tasks, or run a local model through Ollama for private work. Lighter models like Sonnet are cheaper and faster for everyday tasks.
Voice messages. OpenClaw supports speech-to-text through OpenAI's Whisper. Send a voice note on Telegram and your agent transcribes and responds. Sounds like a gimmick until you're driving and need to delegate something.
Multi-agent setups. Spin up a second agent: one for work, one for personal. Different system prompts, different skills, different memory. Same VPS.
Security hygiene. Use the pairing system. Don't set DM policy to "open" unless you know what you're doing. Review what skills have access to before enabling them. Periodically check your sessions in the dashboard. This thing has access to a computer. Treat it like giving someone the keys to your office.
The full setup takes about 15 minutes with Hostinger's one-click deployment:
No Docker setup. No SSH configuration. No dependency installs. Select the OpenClaw template, add your API key, and you're configuring your agent in minutes.
If you want the full video walkthrough with live demos of every workflow above, Watch it here .
And if you want to go deeper: learning how to think in agents , architect your workflows around them, and build systems that compound over time. I'm building a comprehensive course on agentic development. Early access link
What will you build with your agent? I'd love to hear. Reach out on X/Twitter or drop a comment on the video.
Watch what happens. It's not giving you code to copy-paste. It's actually building the project, installing dependencies, connecting to the GitHub API, building the UI, pushing to a repo, and deploying it. It sends back a live URL.
From your phone. While you're doing something else.
You can also manage your repos:
Check my open PRs on [repo]. Anything that needs attention?
#107 seems serious. Review it and leave comments if anything looks off.
Git workflows from Telegram. Code review from your phone. Deployments without opening a terminal.