From the end of March until now, I’ve installed 20 skills on OpenClaw.

Not for the sake of tinkering, but because it truly saves time.

My previous morning routine was as follows: wake up, check foreign exchange rates, manually screenshot and send to the trading group; then open the Toutiao backend to review yesterday’s data; reply to readers in the Tomato Novel comments section; finally, spend half an hour organizing files on my desktop.

This whole process took over an hour.

Now? All these tasks are automated. OpenClaw completes them every morning at 8 AM, and I can see the results as soon as I wake up.

Today, I won’t discuss deployment or comparisons; instead, I’ll focus on the three skills I use daily and which ones have become obsolete.

20 Skills, Only 3 Are Essential

The OpenClaw skills repository is now rich, with hundreds of options from both the official and community sources. Initially, I was overwhelmed and installed many interesting skills, but after installing 20, I found that only three are truly essential for daily use.

The remaining 17 are used occasionally or just installed for curiosity.

So, I’ll only discuss these three “must-have” skills. I won’t recommend the ineffective ones as they waste time.

Automatic Publishing on Toutiao — I Can’t Live Without This

The skill I rely on the most, without a doubt.

The principle is not complicated: OpenClaw connects to the Toutiao editing page via Chrome CDP, automatically fills in the title and content, and then directly calls Toutiao’s publishing API.

The entire process takes 23 seconds.

What was my experience publishing articles manually?

Open the Toutiao backend → click “Publish Graphic Text” → paste the title → paste the content (which often gets formatted into a mess, requiring adjustments) → find a cover image → publish → wait for review. A minimum of 15 minutes.

Now, I’ve set a cron job that automatically triggers every day at 7:30 AM. OpenClaw selects topics, writes drafts, polishes, and publishes in one go.

All I have to do is check the publishing results after getting out of bed and confirm there were no issues.

Saving 15 minutes a day may not seem like much, but over a month, that adds up to 7.5 hours. In a year, that’s enough to give you several extra workdays.

By the way, I’ve also tried using AI for browser automation to click buttons for publishing, but that method is fragile; any change to the Toutiao page breaks it. Directly calling the API via CDP is the right way.

Batch Processing Excel/PDF — A Lifesaver for Traders

As a trader and e-commerce entrepreneur, I deal with spreadsheets daily.

Transaction records need organizing, competitor prices need collecting, and supplier contracts in PDF format need conversion. Previously, all of this was manual work; now, it’s a matter of a single command.

Here’s a real example.

Every Friday, I need to create a trading weekly report. Manually, this involves: exporting data → categorizing by type → calculating profits and losses → drawing profit curves → formatting. This takes at least 40 minutes.

Now, I just tell OpenClaw, “Help me organize this week’s trading records, categorize profits and losses by type, and draw a chart,” and I get results in 30 seconds.

Another example related to e-commerce: when I conduct product research, I often need to collect competitor prices. Previously, I would open Taobao and copy-paste one by one; now, I just say, “Collect the prices and sales of the top 20 listings for ‘stainless steel thermos cup’ and organize them into a table.”

For handling PDF contracts, if a supplier sends a contract that needs a delivery date changed, I used to convert it to Word, edit, and convert it back. Now, I can just say, “Change the date in the third clause of this PDF from May 15 to May 20.”

These three tasks alone conservatively save me an hour every day.

Online Search + Automatic Creation — Solving Topic Anxiety

This skill has only recently become smooth for me, but once I started using it, there was no going back.

When publishing articles on Toutiao daily, the biggest headache isn’t writing — it’s not knowing what to write about.

Hot topics are too competitive, niche topics lack traffic, and the middle ground is uncertain. Previously, I would spend half an hour just agonizing over topic selection.

Now, online search and content creation are linked: every morning, it automatically searches for topics related to “AI agents” → analyzes which ones have high engagement → automatically selects one → writes a draft → polishes it to remove AI tones → publishes.

Yes, the article you’re reading now was created this way.

The time saved with this skill is less about time itself and more about reducing “decision fatigue.” I no longer have to wrack my brain every day to think of what to write; AI helps select the topic, and I just need to ensure the quality.

The Remaining 17 Skills, To Be Honest

After discussing the three main skills, I’ll briefly mention the rest.

Occasionally useful but not daily:

• Email management — checking once a week is enough.
• File organization — summon it when my desktop is too messy to look at.
• Webpage translation — useful for reading English technical documents.

Installed, tried, but left unused:

• Image generation — occasionally used for articles, but most of the time unnecessary.
• Voice TTS — created a few audio versions of articles, but the response was average.
• Code assistant — used when writing scripts, but I don’t code daily.

Honestly not recommended:

• Some marketing-related skills — described in an exaggerated way, but the actual effect is disappointing.
• Certain data collection skills — overly aggressive anti-scraping measures make them nearly unusable.

So my sincere advice is: don’t install too many at once. Start with 3-5 skills that solve your most pressing problems, get familiar with them, and then gradually add more.

What Did I Do with the 3 Hours Saved?

Let’s do the math. I used to spend about 6 hours a day on “low-value repetitive work”; now, I’ve cut it down to 3 hours.

What did I do with the extra 3 hours?

I researched new trading strategies, learned about new AI tools, wrote novels on Tomato Novel (where I’ve serialized several works), and studied product selection in e-commerce.

In short, AI helps you handle the tedious tasks, allowing you to focus on what only humans can do.

Can Non-Programmers Use It?

One of the most frequently asked questions is: “I can’t program, can I use OpenClaw?”

The answer is yes. Installing skills requires just one command:

openclaw skills install skill_name

No coding is needed.

But “installing” and “using well” are two different things. You need to learn how to describe your needs to AI and how to judge the results.

My experience is to start with one skill, focus on it for a week, and note down the commands you find useful. I’ve kept a file documenting these “useful phrases,” and I’ve already written over 60 entries.

Take it slow; don’t rush. It took me a month and a half to go from one skill to twenty. There’s no need to hurry.

A friend once told me I rely too much on AI, asking, “What if the service goes down?”

I replied, if you use a washing machine to do laundry, you wouldn’t hand wash if the machine broke, right?

This isn’t about dependence; it’s about understanding the value of your time. Just calculate that clearly.