Migrating OpenClaw agents to Claude Code after third-party harness deprecation
Anthropic ended support for third-party harnesses, requiring users to migrate their OpenClaw agents to Claude Code. One developer successfully moved 17 agents (10 platform promo agents and 7 content pipeline crons) running on a Max subscription in about four hours.
Migration steps
The developer created a CLAUDE.md file in each OpenClaw workspace directory as the entry point, telling Claude "you are this agent, read HEARTBEAT.md, follow it step by step." Each file was about 20 lines.
A bash wrapper script was created to run:
claude -p --model sonnet --dangerously-skip-permissionswith output piped to Slack via curl. OpenClaw heartbeats were replaced with macOS crontab entries using the same intervals and schedule.
Technical details
The claude binary is located at ~/.local/bin/claude, which isn't in cron's default PATH. Since cron can't access macOS Keychain, the OAuth token must be set as an environment variable with CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN in crontab.
The --bare flag breaks authentication for subscription users by skipping OAuth.
The one-liner per agent was:
claude -p --model sonnet --dangerously-skip-permissions --append-system-prompt "You are the Reddit agent. Read CLAUDE.md first, follow HEARTBEAT.md." "Execute your heartbeat."Browser automation
Agents using OpenClaw's CDP browser can continue using the same exec openclaw browser commands if the gateway remains running, or switch to Claude in Chrome or Playwright MCP.
The migration preserved all existing agent logic files: HEARTBEAT.md, PLAYBOOK.md, SOUL.md, and BROWSER-*.md files required zero rewriting.
📖 Read the full source: r/openclaw
👀 See Also
Claude Code Skills vs. Custom Agents: A Mental Model Based on Task Consistency
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Skill-writing principles for Claude Code from 159 open-source skills
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A Solo Developer's Two-Phase Prompting Method for Large Projects with Claude AI
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12 OpenClaw SOUL.md and STYLE.md Templates with Practical Lessons
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