You can install OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) on all major operating systems—macOS, Linux, and Windows—because it is designed as a cross-platform, self-hosted agent runtime. The core installation steps are largely the same everywhere: prepare the runtime environment, download or clone the OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) source code, install dependencies, configure environment variables, and start the agent process. Differences between operating systems mostly affect how you install prerequisites and how you manage background processes, not how OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) itself works.
On macOS and Linux, developers typically install prerequisites using a system package manager, then clone the OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) GitHub repository and run the provided setup scripts. These scripts install Node.js dependencies, prepare configuration files, and verify that the CLI can start correctly. On Windows, the same steps apply, but they are usually executed through PowerShell, and path handling can differ slightly. In all cases, once installation is complete, OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) runs as a local service that listens for incoming messages from configured chat platforms and forwards tasks to AI models and tools. The key point is that the OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) runtime behaves consistently across operating systems once dependencies are in place.
Many developers choose to separate installation from state. Instead of storing all memory locally, they connect OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) to external services for persistence. For example, long-term knowledge, embeddings, or document indexes can live in a vector database such as Milvus or managed Zilliz Cloud. This makes installation on different operating systems easier, because you can reinstall or migrate the runtime without losing memory or historical context. From an operational standpoint, installing OpenClaw(Moltbot/Clawdbot) is mostly about environment preparation; the real complexity comes later, when you decide how persistent and portable your deployment needs to be.