ClawHub Now Has a Native Package Catalog — What Changed and Why It Matters

ClawHub — the official skill registry for OpenClaw — quietly expanded its scope. It now hosts native OpenClaw code plugins and bundle plugins alongside the existing SKILL.md text-based skills. Here's what the catalog includes, how to browse it, and what to watch out for.

What ClawHub Is (Quick Refresher)

ClawHub is the official OpenClaw skill registry. It's where you browse and install SKILL.md-based agent skills — the text-based instruction files that give your OpenClaw agent specialized capabilities (weather lookups, GitHub ops, Discord management, etc.).

Until recently, ClawHub was skills-only. Now it's expanded into a unified catalog.

What's New: The Package Catalog

ClawHub now exposes a native OpenClaw package catalog — separate from SKILL.md skills — that includes:

• Code plugins — compiled/bundled extensions that add new tool capabilities directly to the OpenClaw runtime
• Bundle plugins — pre-packaged combinations of config, skills, and plugins for specific use cases

Each package includes family/trust/capability metadata so you can evaluate what a plugin actually does and whether it's from a trusted source before installing.

How to Browse It

Via the CLI (requires the clawhub CLI):

# Browse the unified catalog (skills + plugins)
clawhub package explore

# Inspect a specific package
clawhub package inspect <package-name>

# Search via vector/semantic search
clawhub search "telegram notifications"

# Traditional skill install (unchanged)
clawhub install <skill-name>

You can also browse at clawhub.ai — the web UI has been updated to show both skills and packages.

Vector Search Is Now Live

ClawHub has moved away from keyword-only search. The registry now uses OpenAI embeddings (text-embedding-3-small) with Convex vector search, so you can search by concept rather than exact name.

In practice: searching for "send a message when a file changes" will surface relevant skills even if they don't use those exact words. This is a meaningful quality-of-life improvement for discovery.

onlycrabs.ai: The SOUL.md Registry

ClawHub also now cross-references onlycrabs.ai — the SOUL.md registry where you can publish and browse agent personas. On the onlycrabs.ai domain, the home page defaults to souls; on clawhub.ai, souls live under /souls.

If you've built a SOUL.md persona you want to share, you can now publish it the same way you'd publish a skill — with versioning, changelogs, and tags.

Security Note: Verify Before Installing

Code plugins run in your OpenClaw runtime with tool access. That's a different risk profile than a SKILL.md text file, which is just instructions. Before installing any plugin from the catalog:

• Check the trust metadata on the package listing
• Look at the GitHub source repo if one is linked
• Check when it was published and how many installs/stars it has
• Be more cautious with packages published in the last few days with no activity

We covered the ClawHavoc malware campaign (1,184 malicious skills uploaded to ClawHub) in a previous post. The same vigilance applies to the new package catalog — maybe more so, since code plugins have deeper system access than text skills.

Bottom Line

ClawHub is evolving from a skill directory into a full package ecosystem. The vector search alone makes it significantly more useful for discovery. The package catalog means you can now install compiled runtime extensions without hunting GitHub repos manually.

If you haven't used ClawHub in a while, it's worth a fresh browse — the catalog has grown substantially and the search actually works now.