📂 Demo 1 — Watched folder → Markdown → Summary

Goal: every 5 minutes, scan c:\temp\sampleDocs for any document files. For each one found, convert it to clean Markdown with markdown_convert, summarize the content with the agent, and write the summary back next to the original file as <original>.summary.md.

Time to complete: ~15 minutes. Tools used: file_system, markdown_convert (+ the agent's own LLM for summarization). Surface: Jobs page (UI-first), with a REST alternative at the end.

🎯 Skip the typing — use the built-in template. Open the Web UI → Jobs → Job Templates and pick Watched folder → Markdown → Summary (id watched-folder-summarizer). It seeds this exact job for you. The walkthrough below explains what each step does, so you understand what the template is doing.

💡 Why this scenario? It's the smallest possible "intelligent watcher" — a recurring job, a couple of tools, and a summarization step. Once it runs, you can swap any of the three pieces (folder, tool, output) for your own use case.

Step 0 — Prepare the folder#

Open PowerShell and create the watched folder plus a couple of sample files:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path c:\temp\sampleDocs -Force | Out-Null
 
# Drop in a sample HTML file (the markdown_convert tool also accepts URLs and many other formats)
@'
<html><body>
  <h1>Quarterly review draft</h1>
  <p>Revenue grew 18% YoY driven by the new pricing tier.
     Churn ticked up to 3.2% in November after the price change.
     Action items: revisit the SMB plan and ship the new onboarding flow.</p>
</body></html>
'@ | Set-Content c:\temp\sampleDocs\quarterly-review.html
 
@'
# Roadmap notes
 
- Ship watched-folder demo
- Add foundry image generator
- Stabilize the secrets UI
'@ | Set-Content c:\temp\sampleDocs\roadmap.md

We'll let the job pick these up automatically.

Step 1 — Open the Jobs page#

Make sure OpenClaw is running: aspire start src\OpenClawNet.AppHost.
Open the Web UI (Aspire Dashboard → OpenClawNet.Web → Open Browser, or go directly to http://localhost:5000).
In the left sidebar click Jobs.

Step 2 — Create the recurring job#

Click + New Job and fill in:

Field	Value
Name	`Folder summarizer (sampleDocs)`
Trigger	`Cron`
Schedule	`/5 * * ` (every 5 minutes)*
Tools allowed	`file_system`, `markdown_convert`
Timeout	`300` seconds
Prompt	the prompt below

Paste this into the Prompt field:

You are a documentation assistant.
 
1. Use the file_system tool with action="list" and path="c:\temp\sampleDocs" to list every file in that folder.
2. For each file whose name does NOT already end with ".summary.md":
   a. Read the file with file_system action="read".
   b. Convert it to clean Markdown by calling markdown_convert.
      - If the path is a local file, first read it and pass its content; otherwise pass the URL.
   c. Produce a 3–5 bullet summary of the document's content in plain English.
   d. Write the summary to "<original_path>.summary.md" using file_system action="write",
      overwriting any existing file. The file should start with a top-level heading
      "# Summary of <original_filename>" followed by the bullets.
3. If a "<file>.summary.md" already exists for a given file, skip that file.
4. At the end, return a short report:
   - Files scanned
   - Files summarized this run (with paths)
   - Files skipped (already summarized)

Click Save. The job is now armed and will fire on the next 5-minute boundary.

🟢 Want to verify it works before waiting 5 minutes? Click the Run now button on the job row — it triggers the same execution immediately.

Step 3 — Watch the run#

In the Jobs list, click your job's name to open the detail page. Each execution shows up under History with:

start/end timestamps,
the tool calls the agent made (you'll see file_system.list, markdown_convert, file_system.write),
the final report from step 4 of the prompt.

If something fails, the run row turns red and the error message is shown inline. Common first-run issues:

Symptom	Fix
`Path not allowed` from `file_system`	Make sure `c:\temp\sampleDocs` exists and is writable by the Gateway process.
`markdown_convert` hangs on a `.docx`	The tool prefers HTML / URLs / plain text. For `.docx`, read the file first and pass the extracted text, or use a tool that knows the format.
`Tool not allowed`	Re-open the job and confirm both `file_system` and `markdown_convert` are checked in Tools allowed.

Step 4 — Confirm the output#

Open c:\temp\sampleDocs in Explorer (or Get-ChildItem c:\temp\sampleDocs) — you should now see, alongside each input file:

quarterly-review.html.summary.md
roadmap.md.summary.md

Each contains a heading and the agent's bullet summary. Drop a new .html, .txt, or .md into the folder; the next run will summarize it and skip the existing summaries.

Step 5 — (Optional) Pause, edit, or delete#

From the Jobs list:

Pause stops future executions but keeps the job and its history.
Edit opens the same form you used to create it.
Delete removes the job and its history.

You can also have the agent itself manage the job from chat: "Pause the Folder summarizer (sampleDocs) job" — it will call schedule.pause for you.

REST alternative#

If you'd rather create the job programmatically (CI, IaC, scripted setup):

POST http://localhost:5010/api/jobs
Content-Type: application/json
 
{
  "name": "Folder summarizer (sampleDocs)",
  "trigger": { "type": "cron", "expression": "*/5 * * * *", "timezone": "UTC" },
  "toolsAllowed": ["file_system", "markdown_convert"],
  "timeoutSeconds": 300,
  "prompt": "You are a documentation assistant.\n\n1. Use the file_system tool ..."
}

PowerShell one-liner:

$body = Get-Content .\watched-folder-job.json -Raw
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri http://localhost:5010/api/jobs `
  -ContentType 'application/json' -Body $body

A ready-to-post payload lives next to this README at watched-folder-job.json.

Where to go next#

Swap markdown_convert for html_query if you only need a specific selector (e.g. just the <h1> of every file).
Add the embeddings tool to the prompt to also build a small in-memory index of summaries — see the upcoming embeddings demo.
Read docs/manuals/30-jobs.md for the full Jobs reference (retry policies, timezones, history retention).