Browse the web and control your files from chat
Use the browser control and file system access from a chat message
OpenClaw has two built-in capabilities this lesson exercises: browser control (browse the web, fill forms, extract data from any site) and full system access (read and write files, run shell commands, execute scripts). Both are triggered from your messenger.
- 1 Ask OpenClaw to browse a web page — for example: 'Go to the OpenClaw GitHub page and tell me the name of the repository.' This tests Browser Control.
- 2 Ask it to read a file from your machine — for example: 'Read the contents of my Desktop/notes.txt and summarise it.' This tests Full System Access.
- 3 Ask it to create a file — for example: 'Write a file to my Desktop called test-agent.txt with the text: agent test successful.'
- 4 Verify the file exists by checking your Desktop.
- 5 Ask it to run a shell command — for example: 'Run the command: echo hello from openclaw and show me the output.'
OpenClaw has browsed a URL, read a file, created a file you can verify on disk, and returned output from a shell command — all triggered from a chat message.
What 'Full System Access' means
OpenClaw runs on your machine with your user account's permissions. It exposes two core capability areas: Browser Control and Full System Access.
Build a two-step browser-and-file task
Chain browser control and file writing in a single instruction to see OpenClaw handle a multi-step task.
Ask OpenClaw to fetch a piece of information from a web page and write it to a local file in one instruction.
- 1 Pick a public web page with a specific fact you want (e.g. the current version number from a project's GitHub releases page).
- 2 Send one instruction: 'Go to [URL], find [fact], and write it to Desktop/fetched.txt.'
- 3 Check that Desktop/fetched.txt was created and contains the correct information.
- 4 Note: if the agent does this in one turn without follow-up prompts, that is the multi-step agentic behaviour working as described.
A file on your Desktop containing information OpenClaw fetched from a URL — created with a single chat instruction.