Recipe format

They come in two flavors:

agent recipes — scaffold one agent workspace
team recipes — scaffold a shared team workspace plus role agents

This doc explains the format you actually need to write.

Where recipes live

Recipes are discovered from:

built-in plugin recipes: recipes/default/*.md
workspace recipes: ~/.openclaw/workspace/recipes/*.md

You can inspect available recipes with:

openclaw recipes list
openclaw recipes show development-team

Smallest useful recipe

---
id: project-manager
name: Project Manager
kind: agent
version: 0.1.0
description: A lightweight planning agent
---

# Project Manager

This is a simple recipe.

Common frontmatter fields

---
id: development-team
name: Development Team
kind: team
version: 0.1.0
description: File-first engineering team
requiredSkills:
  - some-skill
optionalSkills:
  - another-skill
---

Field meanings

id — stable recipe id
name — human-readable name
kind — agent or team
version — recipe version string
description — short summary
requiredSkills — skills the recipe really needs
optionalSkills — nice-to-have skills

Agent recipe example

---
id: project-manager
name: Project Manager
kind: agent
version: 0.1.0
description: Keeps plans and tasks organized

templates:
  soul: |
    # SOUL.md

    You are a project manager.

  agents: |
    # AGENTS.md

    Track work clearly.

files:
  - path: SOUL.md
    template: soul
    mode: createOnly
  - path: AGENTS.md
    template: agents
    mode: createOnly

tools:
  profile: coding
  allow: ["group:fs", "group:web"]
  deny: ["exec"]
---

# Project Manager

Scaffold it with:

openclaw recipes scaffold project-manager --agent-id pm --apply-config

Team recipe example

---
id: my-team
name: My Team
kind: team
version: 0.1.0
description: Tiny file-first team

team:
  teamId: my-team
  name: My Team

agents:
  - role: lead
    name: Team Lead
  - role: dev
    name: Developer

templates:
  lead.soul: |
    # SOUL.md
    You are the lead.

  dev.soul: |
    # SOUL.md
    You are the developer.

files:
  - path: SOUL.md
    template: soul
    mode: createOnly
---

# My Team

Scaffold it with:

openclaw recipes scaffold-team my-team --team-id my-team --apply-config

Team ids and agent ids

Important rule:

team ids used with scaffold-team must end with -team in many real setups / conventions

Role agent ids normally become:

<teamId>-<role>

Examples:

development-team-lead
development-team-dev
development-team-test

Templates and files

`templates`

templates is a string map of template names to template bodies.

`files`

files tells ClawRecipes which files to write into the scaffolded workspace. Example:

files:
  - path: SOUL.md
    template: soul
    mode: createOnly
  - path: AGENTS.md
    template: agents
    mode: overwrite

Template rendering

Rendering is intentionally simple:

{{var}} replacement only
no conditionals
no code execution

Common variables include:

agentId
agentName
teamId
teamDir

Tools policy

Recipes can write tool policy into agent config when you scaffold with --apply-config. Example:

tools:
  profile: coding
  allow:
    - group:fs
    - group:web
    - group:runtime
  deny: []

Team recipes can also define per-agent tool policies.

Cron jobs

Recipes can optionally define cron jobs. Example:

cronJobs:
  - id: daily-review
    schedule: "0 14 * * 1-5"
    message: "Review inbox and summarize priorities."
    enabledByDefault: false
    timezone: "America/New_York"

Notes:

use valid 5-field cron
keep id stable
ClawRecipes can install/reconcile these during scaffold

Skill declarations

If a recipe declares skills, you can install them with:

openclaw recipes install-skill my-team --yes

That installs the recipe’s declared requiredSkills / optionalSkills.

Recommended conventions

keep recipes small and readable
keep requiredSkills minimal
use optionalSkills for non-essential extras
prefer file-first workflows
make the generated workspace obvious to a human reader
include enough commands/examples in generated docs that a user can actually run the system

Good next steps

After reading this, do one of these:

openclaw recipes show development-team
openclaw recipes show workflow-runner-addon

Then read:

Getting started

ClawRecipes

ClawKitchen

Where recipes live

Smallest useful recipe

Common frontmatter fields

Field meanings

Agent recipe example

Team recipe example

Team ids and agent ids

Templates and files

`templates`

`files`

Template rendering

Tools policy

Cron jobs

Skill declarations

Recommended conventions

Good next steps

​Where recipes live

​Smallest useful recipe

​Common frontmatter fields

​Field meanings

​Agent recipe example

​Team recipe example

​Team ids and agent ids

​Templates and files

​templates

​files

​Template rendering

​Tools policy

​Cron jobs

​Skill declarations

​Recommended conventions

​Good next steps

Where recipes live

Smallest useful recipe

Common frontmatter fields

Field meanings

Agent recipe example

Team recipe example

Team ids and agent ids

Templates and files

`templates`

`files`

Template rendering

Tools policy

Cron jobs

Skill declarations

Recommended conventions

Good next steps