Build a Personal AI System on Your Computer · Personal AI Systems Essentials
Personalize Your Assistant
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Making It Yours: Personality, Memory, and Permissions
A personal AI system is only as good as the context you give it. This lesson is where it becomes yours.
Here, you'll learn how to provide your AI with real context about who you are and how you work — and every interaction from here will be sharper for it.
How OpenClaw Learns About You
OpenClaw uses simple text files to store context about itself and about you.
You don't need any technical knowledge to create or edit them — they're plain text, like a note. But what you put in them has an immediate effect on how your AI behaves.
SOUL.md — Who Your AI Is
SOUL.md is the file that defines your AI's personality, tone, and priorities. It's like a brief you'd give a new assistant on their first day — how you want them to communicate, what to prioritize, and how to handle situations where they're not sure what to do.
Without a SOUL.md, your AI defaults to a generic tone that works for everyone and feels tailored to no one. A few paragraphs here make an immediate difference.
You don't need to write an essay. A few honest sentences on each of these is enough.
- How you want it to communicate: formal or conversational, brief or detailed, direct or gentle.
- What it should do when it's unsure whether to act or check in first — the default instinct you want it to have.
- Any habits you want it to follow consistently: always summarize at the end, never send anything without your approval, flag anything that looks urgent.
practice preview
Interactive practice
Fill in the blank
Complete this line for your SOUL.md.
USER.md — Who You Are
USER.md is about you. This is where you give it the context it needs to understand your life, your work, and your preferences — so it stops treating you like a stranger.
The more honestly you fill this in, the more your AI feels like it actually knows you. It loads this file automatically as background context in every session — without you having to mention it.
A few sentences on each of these goes a long way.
- Who you are and what you do — your job, your role, the kind of work you spend most of your time on.
- How your day is structured — when you're typically available, when you're in meetings, when you do your best thinking.
- Your biggest frustrations and priorities right now — what you most need help with, what keeps falling through the cracks.
practice preview
Interactive practice
Fill in the blank
Complete this USER.md with real specifics — not vague placeholders. The more honest and concrete this is, the more useful your AI becomes from day one.
practice preview
Interactive practice
Fill in the blank
The more specific this is, the better your AI gets at knowing when to act, when to wait, and what to prioritize. Complete this block for your USER.md.
How to Edit These Files
Your workspace folder is at ~/.openclaw/workspace on your Mac. The easiest way to get there is to open Finder, click Go in the menu bar, select Go to Folder, and type that path.
Inside you'll find SOUL.md and USER.md already created — OpenClaw generates empty versions during setup. Open either one with TextEdit, write what you want, and save.
MEMORY.md — Your AI's Running Notes
There's a third file worth knowing about: MEMORY.md. This is where OpenClaw stores things it's learned from your conversations — decisions you've made, preferences you've mentioned, context that came up along the way.
You don't write this one yourself — your AI builds it over time. But you can read it, edit it, and add to it directly if you want to give it a head start.
practice preview
Interactive practice
Fill in the blank
Complete this entry to improve your AI memory file.
Real Examples
You can use these files in ways that quickly become indispensable.
- Store weekly priorities in USER.md every Monday morning so your AI knows what matters most that week.
- Have your AI update MEMORY.md after every morning briefing with what got resolved and what's still open — a running log that never needs to be manually maintained.
Telling Your AI What It Can Do on Your Mac
The last thing to set up in this lesson is exec approvals — the setting that controls what actions your AI is allowed to take on your Mac, and which ones it needs to ask you about first.
It's like the line between your AI thinking and your AI acting.
How Exec Approvals Work
When OpenClaw wants to do something on your Mac — open a file, run a process, interact with an app — it checks its approvals list first.
If the action is on the approved list, it goes ahead. If it isn't, it pauses and asks you. You can allow it once, or tell it to always allow that action in the future, which adds it to the list automatically.
This means you're never surprised by your AI doing something you didn't expect. It builds trust gradually — each time you approve an action, your AI learns what it's allowed to do, and it needs to ask less often over time.
Setting Up Exec Approvals
Open the OpenClaw app from your menu bar and go to Settings → Exec Approvals. You'll see the current security level and a list of any actions already approved.
For most people starting out, the default setting — which asks for approval on anything not already on the list — is the right place to begin.
You don't need to configure anything manually here. Just be ready for your AI to ask permission the first time it tries something new, and decide in the moment whether to allow it once or always.
What You Now Have
Your AI knows who it is and how it should behave. It knows who you are and how you work. And it has a clear boundary between acting and asking — so it can get things done without overstepping.
What Comes Next
In the next lesson, you'll put everything together — real tasks, real delegation, and the habits that get you the most useful results. This is where the guide stops being about setup and starts being about what your AI can actually do for your life.
