If OpenClaw Still Needs Your Next Prompt, It Is Not Autonomous Yet — A Setup Prompt for Persistent Workflows

A Reddit user shares a setup prompt to make OpenClaw autonomous — no more waiting for your next instruction to decide the next step. The core insight: if your OpenClaw still needs you to prompt every move, you've built a remote control, not an autonomous workflow.

The Coordination Pattern

OpenClaw should act as the coordinator around your coding workflow, not another chat surface. Codex does the long-running implementation work — investigating, patching, testing, reviewing. OpenClaw keeps the project state: the mission, active milestone, what changed, what evidence exists, what's blocked, and what needs a human decision. The main OpenClaw thread should stay focused on coordination, not become a transcript of every implementation detail.

The Shared Roadmap: GOALS.md

For larger work, use a GOALS.md file as the shared roadmap — not a random task list, but a milestone file recording intended outcome, current scope, decisions, blockers, and required evidence before moving on. Only one Codex goal should be active at a time. When that milestone is done, OpenClaw should audit the roadmap, review evidence, update project state, and only then move to the next goal.

The Setup Prompt

The user provides a Google Doc with the exact prompt to use for teaching OpenClaw this workflow. The prompt instructs OpenClaw to investigate your existing workflow first, preserving any better roadmaps, ledgers, dashboards, review loops, or verification conventions you already have. This is a setup prompt, not something you feed repeatedly — it teaches the workflow how not to need the next prompt. The Google Doc link is in the original Reddit post.