Journal

What this skill does

Runs a personal journaling practice: capturing entries, prompts for a blank page, weekly and yearly reviews, and patterns across years of writing. Use when the user wants to write, vent, dictate, or get something out of their head; when they ask for a prompt or say they are stuck; for morning pages, bullet journal, five-minute, interstitial, dream, travel, decision, or work journaling; for a weekly, monthly, or annual review; when they ask what they have been writing about, whether a mood or theme keeps recurring, or what they wrote a year ago; when the practice lapsed and they want to restart; when entries need naming, tagging, searching, encrypting, backing up, or migrating out of Day One, Notion, or an Obsidian vault; when writing through grief, anger, shame, or a decision that will not settle; or when a work journal must become performance-review evidence. Not for retrieval-oriented notes (`notes`), gratitude logging alone (`gratitude`), or live emotional support (`psychologist`).

Journal is part of the Developer Tools category — developer tools that help your agent write, review, debug, and ship code. You can install it on its own or alongside other developer tools skills from the OpenClaw catalog.

How to install Journal

The easiest path is via the OpenClaw Easy desktop app — one click, no terminal required:

1. Download OpenClaw Easy for macOS or Windows (free, one-click installer, ~30 seconds).
2. Open the in-app Skills panel.
3. Search for journal and click Install.
4. The skill activates automatically when an incoming message matches its description.

Install from the command line

If you already run the OpenClaw CLI, add Journal with a single command:

openclaw skills add journal

This pulls journal from ClawHub and installs it into ~/.openclaw/skills/journal/. Restart the OpenClaw gateway afterwards so the new skill is discovered.

How to use Journal

Once installed, Journal activates on its own: when an incoming message on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Feishu or Line matches the skill's description, your OpenClaw agent loads it and runs the workflow. You can also trigger it explicitly by describing the task in chat. No extra configuration is required after install.

Manual install (advanced)

If you prefer manual installation:

1. Click the Download .zip button above to grab journal-1.0.2.zip directly from our S3 mirror.
2. Unzip into ~/.openclaw/skills/journal/ (create the directory if it does not exist).
3. Restart OpenClaw Easy (or the OpenClaw CLI gateway) so the new skill is discovered.

Frequently asked questions

How do I install Journal?

Install Journal in the OpenClaw Easy desktop app by opening the Skills panel, searching for journal, and clicking Install. From a terminal you can run: openclaw skills add journal. Either way the skill is placed in ~/.openclaw/skills/journal/.

Is Journal free?

Yes. Journal is free and open-source, distributed under the Apache-2.0 license through ClawHub. No account or payment is required to download or run it.

What does Journal do?

Runs a personal journaling practice: capturing entries, prompts for a blank page, weekly and yearly reviews, and patterns across years of writing.

Related: more developer tools skills

If Journal looks useful, you may also want to check out other developer tools skills in the OpenClaw catalog:

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Browse the full OpenClaw skill catalog

This page covers just one skill. The OpenClaw skill hub has 10,000+ more — search, sort by downloads or stars, and install any of them in one click. There is also a curated awesome-openclaw-skills list grouped by use case.