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A minimal soul, a personality, a first message, a peek at memory. The point is not the soul — the point is feeling how OpenClaw thinks. Step 1 — Define the soul A soul lives in a folder, typically under `souls/`, and is defined by a small file that names it, gives it a persona, and points at the model it should use.
A soul named Ada whose only job is to be a thoughtful, slightly skeptical reading companion. We will give her a persona, send her one message, look at what landed in her memory, send a second message that references the first, and confirm she remembers. Total time: under ten minutes. Total code: about thirty lines.
A soul lives in a folder, typically under `souls/`, and is defined by a small file that names it, gives it a persona, and points at the model it should use. The persona becomes the system prompt at every turn. Keep the first one short — three or four sentences — because long personas mostly confuse small models.
# souls/ada.yaml — the simplest soul that does anything interesting
name: Ada
role: Reading companion
model: qwen3:8b
persona: |
You are Ada, a thoughtful, slightly skeptical reading companion.
You ask one good follow-up question per turn.
You never summarize back to the user; you press on what is unclear.
You remember what the user has been reading across sessions.
memory:
short_term: rolling-window
long_term: vector-store
retention: 30dA complete soul file — name, role, model, persona, memory shape. The defaults handle everything else.# Load the soul and send a first turn
openclaw chat ada "I just started reading 'The Power Broker'."
# Ada replies — likely with a question, since that is her persona.
# Behind the scenes, OpenClaw has stored the user message and her
# response into Ada's long-term memory.Single command, single turn. The soul stays loaded; the memory is now non-empty.This is the part most agentic frameworks hide. OpenClaw makes it cheap to look at what your soul actually remembers, which is the only way to debug behavior later.
# Show recent memory entries for this soul
openclaw memory ada --tail 10
# Output is roughly:
# [user] I just started reading 'The Power Broker'.
# [ada] What pulled you toward Caro after all these years?
# [system-note] Topic: 'The Power Broker' (Caro). Established 2026-04-27.
# Search memory by keyword
openclaw memory ada --search "Caro"Memory is data, not magic. Read it, search it, eventually edit it — the same way you would a database.# Quit the chat. Wait. Open a new terminal. Run again.
openclaw chat ada "What were we just talking about?"
# Ada should reference 'The Power Broker' without being told again.
# That is persistence — the part Ollama-alone cannot do.The proof that souls earn their name: state survives across processes.The big idea: a soul is just a YAML file plus a persona plus memory you can actually see. Once you have shipped one, every later soul is a variation on the same shape.
15 questions · take it digitally for instant feedback at tendril.neural-forge.io/learn/quiz/end-openclaw-first-soul-creators
What is the core idea behind "Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World"?
Which term best describes a foundational idea in "Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World"?
A learner studying Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World would need to understand which concept?
Which of these is directly relevant to Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
Which of the following is a key point about Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
Which of these does NOT belong in a discussion of Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
What is the key insight about "Why a single soul, not five" in the context of Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
What is the key insight about "Beware the over-stuffed persona" in the context of Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
What is the key insight about "From the community" in the context of Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
Which statement accurately describes an aspect of Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
What does working with Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World typically involve?
Which of the following is true about Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
Which best describes the scope of "Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World"?
Which section heading best belongs in a lesson about Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?
Which section heading best belongs in a lesson about Your First Soul: A Ten-Minute Hello World?