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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.

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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

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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.

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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
---

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Templates and files

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templates

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

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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

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Template rendering

Rendering is intentionally simple:
  • {{var}} replacement only
  • no conditionals
  • no code execution
Common variables include:
  • agentId
  • agentName
  • teamId
  • teamDir

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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.

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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

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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.
  • 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

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Good next steps

After reading this, do one of these: 
openclaw recipes show development-team
openclaw recipes show workflow-runner-addon
Then read: