OpenClaw Smart Home Automation in 2026: Control Your Home from Telegram

You walk in the door. You want the lights dimmed, the TV on, and jazz playing through the living room speakers. Right now, that means opening three apps. SmartThings for the lights, the Sonos app for music, and the TV remote — which you left somewhere between the couch cushions.

Or you could type one message in Telegram: “Dim the living room lights to 30%, turn on the TV, and play jazz on the Sonos.”

That’s not a concept demo. That’s what OpenClaw smart home automation looks like in 2026. Your AI agent, sitting in whatever messaging app you already use, becomes the single interface for every device in your home. No dashboard hopping. No app switching. One conversation thread that controls everything.

Why Use OpenClaw for Smart Home Control?

There’s no shortage of smart home platforms. Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa — they all work. So why route your home automation through an open-source AI agent framework with 145K+ GitHub stars?

Three reasons.

One interface for everything. Smart home ecosystems are fragmented by design. Samsung wants you in SmartThings. Sonos wants you in the Sonos app. Philips wants you in the Hue app. OpenClaw connects to all of them through skills, and you interact through a single chat window. Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Signal — pick your messaging app and that’s your universal remote.

Natural language, not button presses. Ask for what you want in plain English. Claude, Anthropic’s model powering OpenClaw agents, handles the interpretation. Your commands can be casual — “make it quieter” works just as well as “set Sonos volume to 40%.”

It’s extensible. Skills are SKILL.md files — plain Markdown. If a device you own doesn’t have a skill yet, write one. No proprietary SDK, no certification process. Publish to ClawHub and your agent picks it up. The whole framework is MIT-licensed.

If you’ve already set up an OpenClaw agent and want a quick overview of the ecosystem, our install guide covers the fundamentals. For smart home specifically, the Smart Home category lists every curated IoT skill on Oh My OpenClaw.

What You Need Before Starting

Before you install your first smart home skill, make sure you have these pieces in place.

A running OpenClaw agent. You need Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) or another OpenClaw-compatible agent installed and connected to a messaging platform. If you haven’t done this yet, our getting started guide walks through the full process.

ClawHub CLI. Skills are installed via the clawhub command. If you can run clawhub install in your terminal, you’re set.

Device accounts and API access. Each smart home skill connects to a third-party service. You’ll need accounts with those services and, in some cases, API keys or OAuth tokens. We’ll cover the specific requirements for each skill below.

A messaging platform connected. Your agent should already be linked to Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, or Signal. Telegram is the most common choice for home automation because it supports rich messages and inline keyboards, but any platform works.

Here’s the quick checklist:

If everything checks out, you’re ready to install skills.

Samsung SmartThings Setup Walkthrough

The samsung-smartthings skill is the most versatile smart home skill in the ecosystem. It connects your agent to Samsung TVs, lights, switches, sensors, locks, and anything else in the SmartThings platform.

Install the Skill

clawhub install samsung-smartthings

Verify it’s loaded:

openclaw skills list

You should see samsung-smartthings in the output.

Create a SmartThings OAuth App

This is the part that takes a few minutes, but it’s a one-time setup. The skill needs OAuth credentials to talk to your SmartThings account.

1. Go to the SmartThings Developer Workspace
2. Create a new project and select “API Access”
3. Under OAuth, add the scopes for the device types you want to control (devices, scenes, locations)
4. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret

Set them as environment variables:

export SMARTTHINGS_CLIENT_ID=your_client_id
export SMARTTHINGS_CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret

Add these to your shell profile (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc) so they persist across sessions.

Authorize Your Account

After setting the credentials, trigger the OAuth flow:

openclaw skills reload

Then send your agent a message like “List my SmartThings devices.” The first time, it will prompt you to authorize through a browser link. Click through, approve access, and you’re connected.

What You Can Do

Once authorized, the skill handles a wide range of commands:

• TV control: Turn on/off, change inputs, adjust volume, launch apps
• Lights: On, off, dim to a percentage, change color temperature
• Switches and outlets: Toggle on or off
• Scenes: Trigger any scene you’ve set up in SmartThings
• Sensors: Check temperature, motion status, door/window open/close

The whole OAuth setup takes roughly 10 minutes. After that, it’s conversational. “Turn off the bedroom lights” just works.

Example use: “Set the living room lights to 50% brightness and turn on the Samsung TV to HDMI 2.”

View samsung-smartthings on Oh My OpenClaw

Sonos Setup Walkthrough

The sonoscli skill gives your agent full control over Sonos speakers. Discover devices on your network, play music, adjust volume, manage groups, and queue tracks — all through chat.

Install the Skill

clawhub install sonoscli

Network Discovery

Sonos works over your local network, so your agent needs to be running on the same network as your speakers. Once the skill is installed, send your agent:

Discover my Sonos speakers.

The skill scans your local network and returns a list of every Sonos device it finds — names, rooms, and current playback status.

Controlling Playback

Once discovery is complete, you can control any speaker by room name:

• Play/pause/skip: “Play music in the kitchen” or “Pause the living room”
• Volume: “Set bedroom volume to 40%” or “Turn it up in the office”
• Grouping: “Group the kitchen and dining room speakers” or “Ungroup all”
• Queue: “Add this album to the living room queue”

The grouping feature is particularly useful. Instead of opening the Sonos app and dragging speakers around, tell your agent to group them by name. “Group all downstairs speakers and play lo-fi beats” handles the whole thing in one message.

No API key or OAuth required for basic Sonos control. The skill talks directly to devices over your local network. This is one of the simplest smart home skills to set up.

Example use: “Play the ‘Evening Jazz’ playlist on the living room Sonos at 35% volume.”

View sonoscli on Oh My OpenClaw

Combining Skills for Smart Home Routines

Individual skills are useful. Combining them is where OpenClaw smart home automation gets interesting. Your agent can call multiple skills in a single response, which means one message can trigger a multi-device routine.

Morning Routine

Here’s what a morning routine looks like with OpenClaw:

Good morning. Run my wake-up routine.

Behind the scenes, your agent:

1. Calls samsung-smartthings to turn on the kitchen lights at 70%
2. Calls sonoscli to play your morning playlist on the kitchen speaker at low volume
3. Calls samsung-smartthings again to turn on the coffee machine (if it’s a smart plug)

Tell your agent what you want once, and it remembers. Next time you type “good morning,” the whole sequence runs automatically.

Movie Night

Movie night is the classic multi-device scenario:

Movie night. Set it up.

Your agent:

1. Dims the living room lights to 15%
2. Turns on the Samsung TV and switches to the streaming input
3. Groups the living room and surround speakers on Sonos
4. Sets volume to 50%

One message. Four actions. No app switching.

Using Browser Automation for Web Dashboards

Some smart home devices don’t have dedicated skills yet but do have web-based control panels. The browser-cash skill handles browser automation, which means your agent can navigate to a web dashboard, click buttons, and read values — all from chat.

This is more of a power-user move. You’ll need a Browser.cash account, and the setup is more involved than the dedicated smart home skills. But for devices that only expose a web interface, it’s the bridge that fills the gap.

clawhub install browser-cash

View browser-cash on Oh My OpenClaw

Monitoring Home Automation Logs

If you’re running home automation software like Home Assistant alongside OpenClaw, the vibetunnel skill lets your agent manage terminal sessions. You can ask your agent to check logs, restart services, or monitor sensor data in real time — all without leaving your chat window.

clawhub install vibetunnel

This is useful for debugging. “Show me the last 20 lines of the Home Assistant log” beats SSH-ing into your server when you’re lying on the couch.

View vibetunnel on Oh My OpenClaw

Advanced: Writing Custom OpenClaw IoT Skills

The four skills above cover a lot of ground, but the smart home world is vast. Maybe you have a Zigbee hub or an obscure thermostat that nobody’s written a skill for yet.

OpenClaw skills are just Markdown files. Writing one is closer to writing a README than building a software project. Here’s a skeleton:

# My Custom Thermostat Skill

## Description
Controls the Acme Smart Thermostat via its REST API.

## Configuration
- ACME_API_KEY: Your Acme thermostat API key

## Commands
- Set temperature: "Set thermostat to {temperature} degrees"
- Get current temperature: "What's the current temperature?"
- Set mode: "Set thermostat to {mode}" (heat, cool, auto, off)

## API Details
Base URL: https://api.acmethermostat.com/v1
Authentication: Bearer token using ACME_API_KEY

Define your commands in natural language, describe the API, and Claude handles the rest. Once it works locally, publish with clawhub publish my-thermostat-skill and it goes live on ClawHub. If the skill is solid, it might end up in the Oh My OpenClaw curated list.

For more on how skills work, check the full install walkthrough.

Limitations and What OpenClaw Can’t Do (Yet)

It’s worth being honest about where the gaps are. OpenClaw smart home automation is genuinely useful, but it’s not a replacement for every dedicated smart home platform.

Latency. A voice command to Alexa processes in under a second. OpenClaw goes through your messaging app, agent, skill, and API before reaching the device. Typical round-trip is 2-5 seconds. Fine for “turn off the lights,” noticeable for “pause the TV right now.”

No physical voice control. OpenClaw works through text. You can’t shout across the room at it. You need your phone in hand to type or dictate a message.

Limited device coverage. The Smart Home category is growing but smaller than Productivity or Development. Samsung SmartThings and Sonos have solid skills. Philips Hue, Ecobee, Nest, Ring — no curated skills yet. They may exist on ClawHub in raw form, or you can write your own.

No sensor-triggered automations. OpenClaw is reactive. You tell it to do something, and it does it. It can’t yet respond automatically when a motion sensor trips or temperature drops. Event-driven automation still needs Home Assistant or SmartThings routines.

Requires a running server. Your agent needs to be running somewhere — a home server, Raspberry Pi, or cloud VM. If that machine goes offline, chat-based control stops. Dedicated platforms run in the cloud independently.

None of these are dealbreakers. The framework is actively developed, and new smart home skills appear on ClawHub regularly.

FAQ

Can OpenClaw replace Google Home or Alexa?

Not entirely. Think of it as a complementary layer. Use it for text-based control from your messaging apps, keep your voice assistant for hands-free commands. OpenClaw shines when combining devices across ecosystems in a single chat interface — something Alexa and Google Home don’t do well with mixed brands.

Do smart home skills work on WhatsApp and Discord, or just Telegram?

All messaging platforms that OpenClaw supports work with all skills. The messaging platform is just the transport layer — the skills don’t care which one you’re using. Control your Samsung TV from WhatsApp, Discord, or Signal just the same.

How many smart home skills are on Oh My OpenClaw?

The Smart Home category is one of 10 skill categories. Oh My OpenClaw curates 433 skills total from the 5,705+ on ClawHub. The smart home selection is growing as more IoT skills get published. Browse the Automation category too, since some home automation skills are tagged there.

Is there a cost to using these skills?

The skills are free and open source. OpenClaw itself is MIT-licensed. Some connected services may have costs — Browser.cash has its own pricing, for example — but SmartThings and Sonos control are free.

Can I control devices when I’m away from home?

Yes, as long as your agent is reachable. Cloud-hosted agents work from anywhere. Local agents need a VPN or tunneling service. The SmartThings skill uses Samsung’s cloud API (works remotely), while the Sonos skill uses local network discovery (needs same-network access).

What happens if my agent goes offline?

Devices keep working through their native apps and physical controls. You just lose the chat interface until the agent comes back. Nothing breaks permanently — OpenClaw is an additional control layer, not a dependency.

Smart Home Skills Summary

Next Steps

If you’re new to OpenClaw entirely, start with How to Find and Install Free OpenClaw Skills. It covers the basics of browsing, installing, and testing any skill.

Already productive with your agent? Check the Best OpenClaw Productivity Skills for 2026 to pair your smart home setup with workflow tools like task managers, calendar sync, and meeting notes.

Browse all curated skills at Oh My OpenClaw — 433 tested skills across 10 categories, including Smart Home and Automation. Find the skills your home needs, install them in one command, and start controlling everything from a single chat window.