Zeroclaw Ai Agent Runtime

---
name: zeroclaw-ai-agent-runtime
description: Expertise in ZeroClaw — the fast, lean, fully autonomous AI agent infrastructure written in Rust with swappable providers, channels, and tools
triggers:
  - set up zeroclaw agent infrastructure
  - deploy zeroclaw on edge hardware
  - configure zeroclaw provider or model
  - zeroclaw tool and channel integration
  - build agentic workflow with zeroclaw
  - zeroclaw cli commands and configuration
  - swap zeroclaw provider or memory backend
  - troubleshoot zeroclaw agent runtime
---

# ZeroClaw AI Agent Runtime

> Skill by [ara.so](https://ara.so) — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

ZeroClaw is a zero-overhead, fully autonomous AI agent runtime written in Rust. It runs on <5MB RAM, starts in <10ms, and ships as a single static binary for ARM, x86, and RISC-V. Its trait-driven architecture makes every core system (LLM providers, communication channels, tools, memory backends, tunnels) hot-swappable without recompiling.

---

## Installation

### One-Click Setup (recommended)

```bash
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw/master/install.sh | bash

Build from Source

# Prerequisites: Rust stable toolchain
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source $HOME/.cargo/env

git clone https://github.com/zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw.git
cd zeroclaw

# Release build (optimised, small binary)
cargo build --release

# Verify binary size and startup performance
ls -lh target/release/zeroclaw
/usr/bin/time -l target/release/zeroclaw --help   # macOS
/usr/bin/time    target/release/zeroclaw --help   # Linux

Verify Installation

zeroclaw --version
zeroclaw status

Core Concepts

Configuration

ZeroClaw uses a TOML config file. Default location: ~/.zeroclaw/config.toml (override with --config).

Minimal Config

# ~/.zeroclaw/config.toml

[provider]
kind = "openai"                         # or "anthropic", "ollama", "custom"
model = "gpt-4o"
api_key_env = "OPENAI_API_KEY"         # env var name, never hardcode

[channel]
kind = "cli"

[workspace]
root = "/home/user/projects"
allow = ["/home/user/projects"]        # explicit allowlist — nothing outside is accessible

Full Config with All Sections