If you use OpenClaw agents in your personal life or at work, you have probably noticed that most skills want you to paste tokens and API keys directly into your config. That works fine for demos and local experiments, but it creates a real problem once you start working with actual data. Credentials get scattered across plugins, there is no audit trail, and revoking access means hunting down every individual skill.

Worse, some of those skills store your tokens in plain config files or environment variables, meaning any other process on the same machine can potentially read them.

Venn solves this by acting as a single, governed MCP gateway between OpenClaw and your SaaS apps. Instead of installing a separate skill for every tool, you install one Venn skill in OpenClaw and manage everything from Venn's dashboard. Your Jira, GitHub, Google Workspace, and other integrations are connected there, with scopes and permissions you define. OpenClaw talks to all of them through Venn's MCP endpoint without ever touching your credentials directly.

This guide walks you through the full setup which only takes a few minutes. 

What You Need Before You Start

Before you begin, make sure you have an active Venn account with at least one app already connected (Jira and GitHub are good starting points). You also need OpenClaw installed and working, along with access to ClawHub, which is the skill marketplace for OpenClaw. You should be comfortable running a command in your terminal.

Step 1: Install the Venn Skill in OpenClaw

Open ClawHub, either through the OpenClaw interface or directly at clawhub.ai, and search for Venn. Click into it and you can review the description and the list of tools it exposes before installing.

To install, you can either run the install command from your terminal or trigger the installation directly with a prompt inside OpenClaw. Both paths register the same skill. Once installed, open the Venn skill's config screen and notice what is not there: no token fields, no client secrets, no environment variables to fill out. The skill only knows how to talk to Venn's MCP endpoint. All the sensitive information stays behind that endpoint.

Step 2: Run the OAuth Connection Flow

The first time you trigger a Venn action inside OpenClaw, it will detect that you have not connected your account yet. OpenClaw will launch an OAuth device flow, which means a browser window opens to the Venn login page. Log into your Venn account there and approve OpenClaw as a client on the authorization screen.

Once you approve, Venn issues a token and stores it securely in a system folder on your machine. OpenClaw never sees or handles your Jira, GitHub, or Google credentials directly. From this point on, every request OpenClaw makes goes through Venn's endpoint with that token, and Venn enforces whatever scopes and permissions you have set up.

Step 3: Confirm Your Apps Are Available in OpenClaw

After the connection is approved, go back into OpenClaw and open the tool list for the Venn skill. You will see the tools that match the apps you have connected in Venn. If you have Jira and GitHub set up in Venn, you will see tools like list_issues and list_pull_requests available right there in OpenClaw without any additional skills installed.

This is a meaningful difference from the typical approach. Normally, connecting OpenClaw to Jira would mean finding a Jira skill, reading its documentation, pasting a personal access token, and hoping the skill does not bloat your context window with dozens of tools you never use. With Venn in front of it, the connection is governed at the Venn layer, and a feature called Tool IQ keeps your context window clean by surfacing only the tools that are relevant to what you are working on.

Step 4: Try a Real Cross-App Request

Once your apps are connected, you can start making requests that span multiple tools in a single prompt. A good first test is something like asking OpenClaw to pull your high-priority Jira issues assigned to you and cross-reference any open GitHub pull requests related to them. Watch the logs as OpenClaw works through the request. Every tool call goes through Venn, not to the external APIs directly.

When the result comes back, flip over to Venn's activity view and you will see those same calls logged there. This is the audit trail that was missing when credentials lived inside individual skills. If you ever need to revoke OpenClaw's access to GitHub or tighten its Jira permissions, you do it once inside Venn and OpenClaw immediately reflects that change.

Why Venn Preferred Over Other ClawHub Skills? 

The traditional way of connecting OpenClaw to SaaS apps involves installing a skill per app, each one storing its own credentials or tokens, with no central audit log and no easy way to revoke access across the board. Some skills use personal access tokens with broad permissions. Others do OAuth but still ask you to expose API tokens in environment variables, which can be exploited by other processes on the same machine.

With Venn as the gateway, credentials live in one place. Permissions are defined once and apply to any agent connecting through Venn. The audit log lives in one place. When you want to add a new app, you add it in Venn's dashboard and it becomes available to OpenClaw automatically through the existing skill connection, with no new credentials to manage in OpenClaw.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is Venn and what does it do?
A: Venn is a control plane for AI tools. It connects to your SaaS apps, including Jira, GitHub, Google Workspace, and others, through a single MCP endpoint. Permissions, credentials, and audit logs all live in Venn rather than being scattered across individual skills or plugins.

Q: What is OpenClaw and what is it used for?
A: OpenClaw is an AI agent platform that uses skills to interact with external services. Skills are modular integrations that give OpenClaw the ability to search, read, write, or take action in apps like Jira, GitHub, or Slack.

Q: What is ClawHub?
A: ClawHub is the skill marketplace for OpenClaw. It is where you find and install skills, including the official Venn skill that this guide covers.

Q: Do I need separate tokens or credentials to connect Venn to OpenClaw?
A: No. The Venn skill in OpenClaw does not require any tokens or API keys during setup. When you first trigger the skill, it walks you through an OAuth browser flow. After you approve OpenClaw as a client in your Venn account, the connection is handled automatically. You never paste credentials into OpenClaw's config.

Q: What apps can I access through Venn in OpenClaw?
A: Any app you have connected to your Venn account becomes available to OpenClaw through the Venn skill. Common examples include Jira, GitHub, Gmail, Google Calendar, Confluence, Slack, and Salesforce. To see all possible integrations here. The specific tools that appear in OpenClaw reflect the apps you have authorized in Venn.

Q: How is this different from installing individual skills for each app in OpenClaw?
A: With individual skills, each one stores its own credentials, there is no central audit log, and revoking access means removing or reconfiguring multiple skills. With Venn, credentials live in one place, every call is logged in Venn's activity view, and access can be adjusted or revoked for all connected agents at once from the Venn dashboard.

Q: What happens if I revoke OpenClaw's access in Venn?
A: As soon as you revoke or adjust permissions in Venn, OpenClaw immediately loses those capabilities. There is no need to update individual skills or delete config entries. The change takes effect the next time OpenClaw attempts to use the affected tools.

Q: What is Tool IQ, and do I need it?
A: Tool IQ is a Venn feature that prevents your OpenClaw context window from being flooded with every tool from every connected app. Instead of loading all available tools up front, it surfaces only the tools relevant to what you are working on at a given moment. It is covered in a separate video in this series.

Q: Can I use Venn with OpenClaw for Google Workspace apps?
A: Yes. Google Workspace, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Docs, can be connected through Venn and accessed via OpenClaw using the same single-skill approach described in this guide. A dedicated walkthrough for Google Workspace is coming in the next video in this series.

Q: Is Venn free to use?
A: Venn has a Basic and Pro plan. For current pricing and plan details, check venn.ai/plans directly as plans may have changed since this was written.

What to Do Next

If you have not already connected any apps in your Venn account, start there before coming back to OpenClaw. The connection quality in OpenClaw depends entirely on what you have set up in Venn first. Once you have apps connected in Venn, follow the steps above to install the skill and authorize the connection.

The next guide in this series covers connecting OpenClaw to Google Workspace through Venn, including why the standard Google skill approach has real security tradeoffs that Venn addresses.