You’ve tried chatbots. Now it’s time to build a real local AI agent that can explore your folders, understand your files, and write reports for you — all inside a secure Docker sandbox on your own PC.
1. Problem & promise
Most AI tools live in the cloud and only answer questions one message at a time. They can’t safely reach into your own files, remember your folders, or run repeatable workflows on your machine. In this course, you’ll build a self-hosted AI agent with OpenClaw that actually does things for you: scanning folders, summarizing documents, and generating clear reports locally.
2. What you’ll build
Step by step, we’ll set up OpenClaw on your computer using Docker, connect Google Gemini 2.5 Flash as the “brain”, and create a dedicated `workspace` where your agent can safely read and write files. By the end of Part 1, your agent will be able to explore a folder on your PC and automatically generate a human-readable `.txt` summary report of what it finds. You’ll see the entire workflow end to end, from first install to your first real automation.
