Behind the Craft

Behind the Craft

AI Tutorials & Tools

Master OpenClaw in 30 Minutes (Safe Setup + 5 Real Use Cases + Memory)

How to safely set up your AI employee, connect it to Google Workspace, and personalize its memory. Plus 5 real use cases that I now rely on my bot for.

Peter Yang's avatar
Peter Yang
Feb 04, 2026
∙ Paid

Dear subscribers,

Today, I want to show you how to use OpenClaw to manage your calendar, edit your documents, send yourself personalized briefings, and much more.

Ever since I set up my bot, I’ve barely touched my other AI apps. It’s just so much easier to text my AI employee to do things while on the go.

Watch my tutorial to see me demo 5 use cases, Google Workspace setup, and more.

Timestamps:

  • (00:00) Why OpenClaw is my favorite AI bot

  • (00:54) How to set up your bot safely in 5 steps

  • (03:01) Use case 1: Manage Google calendar

  • (05:40) Use case 2: Edit Google Docs and Sheets

  • (08:31) Use case 3: Give your bot a voice

  • (11:15) Use case 4: Get personalized briefings

  • (13:50) Use case 5: Get weekly insight reports

  • (15:48) How to connect to Google Workspace

  • (21:47) How to personalize your bot’s memory and soul

Watch now on YouTube or read the written guide.


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Recap: How to set up OpenClaw safely

Just my bot Zoe introducing herself to you all

Let’s first recap how to set up OpenClaw safely so that you don’t get compromised:

  1. Run it on a dedicated computer. I installed my bot on a Mac Mini but any old MacBook will do. Keep your Mac on 24/7 using a free app called Amphetamine.

  2. Give it its own credentials. My bot (I call her Zoe) has her own Apple and Gmail ID.

  3. Run OpenClaw’s security audit. In terminal, type “clawdbot security audit --deep” and then follow its instructions to make it more secure.

  4. Give it read access to your main account and write access to select files. For example, Zoe can read my calendar and edit select Google Docs and Sheets but can’t access my entire Google Drive.

  5. Never share your bot with anyone else. Don’t add it to any group chats or websites. Zoe can only talk to me.


5 everyday tasks I’ve delegated to my bot

When I talk about OpenClaw, I get questions like:

  1. “Why can’t you just vibe code an app for this?”

  2. “Is this really better than Claude Code?”

Using my bot doesn’t feel like using an app. It feels like onboarding an AI employee that I can train to do whatever I want her to do.

Here are 5 tasks that I’ve delegated to Zoe:

1. Managing calendar invites

Zoe has view access to my calendar, so I can simply text her to schedule things for me.

For example, I recently texted Zoe to send me a calendar invite for a family trip to SF. It’s way easier than navigating the Google Calendar app:


2. Editing Google documents

Zoe can edit select Google Docs and Sheets that I’ve shared with her.

For example, I asked Zoe to draft a plan for my weekend visit to the city in a Google Doc. She included Caltrain schedules and lunch options at the Ferry Building:

Zoe can also edit specific Google Sheet cells and Google slides just through texting. I demo this in my video tutorial.


3. Reply via voice

Zoe is more fun to talk to when she can reply with voice. To set this up, just ask:

I want to let you reply to me with voice. What are some options to do this?

She found a few voices in Microsoft’s Edge TTS service, which is free to use. I ended up giving her a soothing British voice to tell me corny dad jokes:

Need to work on her comedy skills

4. Daily morning briefs

One of Zoe’s most useful capabilities is that she can schedule recurring tasks that run at a set date and time (also known as cron jobs).

Every morning at 6:30 AM, Zoe sends me a personalized briefing with weather, calendar events, priority tasks, trending AI tweets, and a personalized thought to start my day. She pulls from this info from Google Calendar, Linear, X, and her memory.

Her personalized thought is my favorite. Here’s what Zoe shared with me recently:


5. Weekly insight report

Zoe can also send me emails from her dedicated Gmail account.

Every Friday, she sends me an email with stats for my latest YouTube videos and Substack articles:

  1. For YouTube, she uses yt-dlp (free) to pull public video data for me and similar channels.

  2. For Substack, there’s no public API access. So I added Zoe as an admin to my Substack and she just uses the browser to pull stats for me!

Here’s what the report looks like:

To try this, just ask your bot:

I want you to send me a weekly email that includes (fill this in).

You probably see where I’m going with this. Zoe (OpenClaw) is the first AI product that I’ve used where it feels like I can just ask her to do anything.

That’s a remarkable feeling.

The ultimate test is if Zoe can register my daughter for the most in-demand summer camps before 200 other parents do so :)

Setting up your bot with Google Workspace

Google Cloud console is really painful and confusing to use

If you’re like me, you probably run your life using Google Workspace. I’ve been waiting for Google to launch an AI that can send me emails, manage my calendar, edit my Google Docs, and more for years.

It turns out that you can set up your OpenClaw bot to do all this in 10 minutes.

Let me walk you through exactly how in 3 steps:

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