Switching from OpenClaw to Hermes does not mean starting over. One command carries persona, memory, skills, API keys and settings. Here is how — and the more durable selection test that falls out of it.
In this pagethe command, what to check, a general test. Not in this pagewhat I migrated.
It reads ~/.openclaw and brings across:
| Item | Worth it because |
|---|---|
| Persona | Months of tuned tone and preference; re-doing it is tedious |
| Memory | The irreplaceable one — what it knows about you and your projects cannot be reconstructed |
| Skills | Accumulated reusable procedure |
| API keys | Saves hunting them down again |
| Settings | All the switches and preferences |
If you already configured things in the new tool, does an import layer on top or paint over? A dry run answers that faster than the docs will.
Importing API keys means they land in the new tool's secrets file (~/.hermes/.env for Hermes).
This is the best moment you will get to audit which keys you are carrying:
expired ones, unused ones, ones you cannot account for — clear them now
rather than moving them into the new house to keep sitting there.
Long-accumulated memory can contain conclusions that stopped being true — a project convention you changed months ago, an approach you abandoned. Import everything and you inherit the stale beliefs too.
Dry-run, read the list, then decide.
| Check | How |
|---|---|
| Memory really came | Ask about something only the old memory would know |
| Keys landed in the right file | Confirm they are in .env and not the main config — this determines your backup strategy |
| Skills are not stale | Read the skill list and delete the obviously outdated (previous page §5) |
The command is only useful to me because on shutdown day
the whole ~/.openclaw directory was archived rather than wiped as no-longer-needed.
It was caution at the time; it turned out to be what preserved the assets from
page 12.
When choosing an always-on agent, alongside what it can do, ask: "where does it keep my assets, and can I take all of them with me?"
Good answer: a few directories, readable formats, copyable wholesale. Bad answer: scattered through a database, sprayed across the system, or existing only inside somebody's cloud account.
That test does not decide how much you enjoy today. It decides whether switching in three months is one command or a fresh start.
This matters even if you never switch tools, because "can be taken away wholesale" and "can be backed up wholesale" are the same property. Page 6's backup list is fundamentally asking the same question: which directories hold your assets?
If you cannot answer, you can neither back up nor leave.
hermes claw migrate (interactive import) and
hermes claw migrate --dry-run (preview); imports persona, memory, skills, API keys and settings
from ~/.openclaw. Official docs, checked 2026-08-21.~/.hermes/.env, other settings in
~/.hermes/config.yaml.