OpenClaw Local Development Workflow Best Practices

Development Environment Setup

Recommended Structure

openclaw-project/
├── .env.development      # Dev environment vars
├── .env.production       # Prod environment vars
├── config/
│   ├── development.js
│   └── production.js
├── workspace/
│   ├── AGENTS.md
│   ├── SOUL.md
│   └── TOOLS.md
├── tests/
│   ├── unit/
│   └── integration/
└── logs/

Environment Configuration

# .env.development
NODE_ENV=development
LOG_LEVEL=debug
LLM_MODEL=gpt-4-turbo-preview
DRY_RUN=true  # Don't execute real actions

# Mock services for development
MOCK_EMAIL=true
MOCK_CALENDAR=true

Debugging Techniques

Verbose Logging

// Enable detailed logging
{
  logging: {
    level: 'debug',
    includeContext: true,
    includeToolCalls: true,
    includeResponses: true
  }
}

Conversation Replay

// Save conversations for replay
await agent.saveConversation('./debug/session.json');

// Replay later
await agent.replayConversation('./debug/session.json');

Testing Strategies

Unit Tests

describe('Email Tool', () => {
  it('should format email correctly', async () => {
    const result = await emailTool.execute({
      to: '[email protected]',
      subject: 'Test',
      body: 'Hello'
    });
    expect(result.formatted).toContain('To: [email protected]');
  });
});

Integration Tests

describe('Full Workflow', () => {
  it('should complete email workflow', async () => {
    const agent = createTestAgent();
    const result = await agent.run('Send a test email');
    expect(result.toolsUsed).toContain('email_send');
  });
});

Hot Reloading

// Watch for bootstrap file changes
npm run dev -- --watch-bootstrap

// Changes to AGENTS.md, SOUL.md reload automatically

Conclusion

Good development practices make building and debugging OpenClaw agents much more efficient.